Playing God
by The Flamel Cult
Summary: I thought the dull aching was something other than my demise. As it turned out, I was sorely mistaken. Perhaps I should listen to Alphonse more; maybe then there wouldn't be another bloody tragedy that would, inevitably, end it all. For good.
1. z e r o : This is the Way the World Ends

_- Annie -_

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**. p r o l o g u e .  
This Is the Way the World Ends**

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Before the accident, I mistook the dull throb in my chest for excitement. Only afterwards did I recognize it for what it was.

A sign—a signal—a message—a sixth sense that told me that something horribly and unmistakably wrong was going to happen. Sometimes it was my lifeline; others, it was my sense of direction.

As you backpedal from the danger, the ache fades; as you near it, it grows steadily more painful into a tight cramp that seems to be right on your heart.

Anybody would seize this signal to save themselves and continue their adventure through life selfishly—anyone with common survival instincts and a brain, anyway. But anyone that actually knew me would know that Edward Elric's last priority is himself; anyone that's ever seen me would know that Edward Elric's first priority is his brother Alphonse. And anyone that's ever _heard _of me would know that Edward Elric is the most stubborn person in all of Amestris. His pride bows to no one, and absolutely nothing is impossible when it comes to saving the innocent and the weak and protecting those you love. (On a deeper note, the only family and friends you have—and the dearest things to you—are what you must defend at all costs.)

After all, "Alchemists be thou for thy people," right? I am the "Hero of the People," aren't I? The "People's Alchemist"? Huh, all titles, that's all any of that is...it only runs as far as my annoying instinct to help everyone.

Child prodigy, huh, right. Isn't someone like that supposed to be a genius? My intelligence runs about as far as school subjects. An inquisitive mind, and figuring out mystery books just past the second chapter _(he's the murderer, moving on)_. I hardly know anything about the real world. Though, could it be said that I know _too much?_ I've been shown the Truth, infinite knowledge, right? It's not that I know to little, it's that I know to much. Far to much for my own good.

Does that make any sense?

Still, I should have recognized the situation... I should've realized who the bastard _really was_. No, _what _the bastard really was. I know that Al did, he was giving me uncertain glances and muttering the occasional "Brother..." and "I don't like this..." or "I don't have a good feeling about this..."

God dammit, why don't I ever _listen _to him? Come to think of it, he was saying the _exact _same things during the accident. Before, even. I never did get a verbal _"I told you so!_" from him, did I? Though, it could be said that the hollow, intimidating suit of armor housing the soul of the sweetest, smartest, most amazingly gentle ("We can't leave him out in the rain! Fur only goes so far to keep the cold out, brother, he could die!") boy in all of existence... That was a sort of reminder, couldn't it be? Nonverbal though it may be, it was the greatest reminder of "You fucked up and this precious boy is paying for it!"

Heh, my reaction was _exactly _the same as back then. I shot him a reassuring smile and an absolutely _arrogant_ "It'll be all right, Al!"

Ff, It wasn't all right, though, was it? That much is clear as fucking glass. Sure, me and Al were both clearly worried about this man's _poor dear wife, _and I guess I passed off my sixth sense as a 'sign that there really is some woman that's gotten kidnapped'.

I'm such a fucking idiot.

We followed him into the alley (could the situation be any _more _obvious?), Al sending me uncertain glances as we go.

Dammit, Al's the genius, not me. Why don't I listen to him?

An ambush. A _fucking ambush. _Oh, believe me, I know what you're thinking "Pff, this is the Fullmetal Alchemist and his little brother! They've lived through hell! They can take a few normal human muggers." Well, sorry, you're as wrong as your assumption. This isn't just a _few normal human muggers. _This is _several _normal _armed _human _murderers._ And with—what, twelve against _two—_we only lasted five minutes clawing through the ambush before they ran away with our money and we were left bleeding on the cold wet pavement.

"Alphonse?" My voice came out as a concerned whisper.

_Tick... tick... tick..._

No response.

_"Al?"_

_Tick... tick... tick..._

Again, no response.

I struggled desperately to get to my knees, blood splashing on the pavement as it gushed from my abdomen. I scrambled forward to his side... It didn't look like he was breathing and there was a deep (_deep_) slash in his chest.

Frantically, I pressed my fingers to his neck, searching through the warm liquid for a pulse.

_Tick... tick..._

Nothing. Absolutely _nothing_.

As first instinct, I immediately put my hands together, hyperventilating as I hurriedly pressed them to his chest—thinking of nothing else.

_Tick..._

The familiar colors of a transmutation shot up around me.

The silver clock hanging from my belt loop stopped ticking, and dark spots hurriedly flittered across my vision before it went completely black. I vaguely felt a slight, dull pain (an echo, like when someone's far away and you can just _barely _hear them) in my back and a sort of throb in my head. It hardly registered that I had fallen. My brain slowed as well as my heart rate... (It's odd, you never really notice it when you're not thinking about it—but as you're dying, it's painfully obvious...)

Suddenly, everything came to a stop.

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_[Eleven hours, forty-six minutes.]_

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	2. o n e : Red Strings That Can Kill

**_- _**_Summer - _

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**. c h a p t e r o n e .  
Red Strings That Can Kill**

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**REWIND**_**.** _

I have a question for you.

Have you ever felt like death?

No, it's not the type of death you probably feel like from an extremely hard sport, or maybe when you're super stressed and you want to punch something, or even when you just think the world is against you.

No, I'm talking about the death that makes you want to tear yourself apart.

It's the death that makes you feel like you just wish you could die yourself, when you wish that everything would just disappear—all your worries, all your laughs and darkness and smiles and bloodshed and _everything._ When you want it to end. When the everlasting darkness appears and it seems to swallow you whole and you feel like there's something missing and there's a dull aching in your chest.

I imagine infinite white. I imagine long corridors and winding stairs and endless hallways. And I imagine a door at the end of the road.

I imagine a door, as large as time itself, with intricate carvings spinning around its edges like vines on a pole and complicated words written in an artistic spiral up and down the middle. I would be hypnotized, and I would reach out my hand to touch it.

Except I can't.

_(Couldn't. This has happened before, remember?)_

I remember feeling like death.

When my fingertips actually brushed against the stone, there was an electric jolt that shifted through me, paralyzing my every muscle. I couldn't breathe. I remember feeling like I wanted to die.

_"Entertaining show, puppet?"_

No. No it wasn't.

_"All right, how about a sequel?" _

I remember a scream. Then I remember nothing.

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**FAST FORWARD.**

When my eyelids closed, I saw white. When I open them, now, I see brown and blue and silver and purple. I'd rather have white than all those colors blinding me even further, so I make the move to close them again... But I can't do more than blink.

There are odd people beside me.

I suppose I'm lying down, based on my vantage point. There is an old man—older than even _Mustang—_with a white beard so long it seems to touch the floor. He wears odd clothing, some kind of overlapping fabric colored bright purple with yellow stars patterned over.

_Definitely crazy._

The others _seem _okay, as I glance them over. I mean, there's a man with scraggly hair that looks like he's been put through madness a few times, a woman whose hair changes from pink to orange to red in a matter of seconds, an actual red-haired woman who looks me over with worried eyes that remind me of Winry.

...I miss Winry.

I miss Al.

I try not to think of them right now.

"...What?" It's the first thing that comes to mind, since I don't know where I am, who I really am at the moment, and how I got here (wherever here is). What else is there for me to say?

"Ah, hello, my boy." the old man starts. He has weird glasses and eyes that twinkle even when there isn't any sunlight hitting them. Odd. I would never trust him - not even with a single cenz.

He's waiting for an answer—his face is expectant as his eyes bore into mine. "Hi." My voice is rather dry and cracked. I hate it. But instead of lashing out, I keep my eyes down and try to piece together where I am—where in hell would they have an insane man and three other sorta-kinda-okay people who don't seem to know who I am? This doesn't look like the military dorms. And there's something _awfully wrong_ in the air, as if there's an electric charge that was weaving its way through. It puts my hair on edge and refuses to let me relax.

The scraggly man grins, showing lopsided teeth. "So, Who're you?"

Weird accent too.

"Edward. Elric." For some reason, I can only speak between pauses. I wish that my throat would become accustomed to air faster. I sound weak. The man nods and seems to think for a moment before leaning back.

"I don't know any Edward Elric."

I stare at him. _He must be crazy as well..._ Okay, so perhaps maybe the guys here've been poisoned by toxic water or something. Someone who doesn't know my name? A total surprise, but a nice one at that. I answer in the only safe way I can think of—"Of course you don't. There's more than fifty million people in the country, and I'm sure you don't know each one by name."

The crazy-haired lady chuckles at the man, who looks shocked and a little pleased. "He's got you there, Sirius."

'Sirius' grins. "I like you, kid."

I snort. "Not many people do. But that's nice to know."

The old guy chuckles; I nearly forgot he's here at all. I look around the room to hide my surprise—it's rather shabby, I would say, like some old penthouses back in Resembool. Everything's a drab blue-gray color, like there's been some sort of limelight there. The window on the far side of the wall is boarded shut; there are only a few other chairs in the room and a lamp perched on a side table...

Overall it looks sort of pathetic.

_(Well, I've lived in worse.)_

I suddenly feel some kind of...poking. Y'know when someone pokes you out of the blue and you jump even though it didn't hurt? Well, that's what it feels like—except in my mind. Weird, but I feel like my head's being violated. I scrunch up my nose and think of myself, mentally pushing the intruder out, even though I truly have no idea what I'm doing.

The old guy blinks.

So it was _him._

"Do you know where you are, young man?" Even though he knows he's at fault, the old guy speaks kindly, almost _condescendingly_. I cross my arms.

"No, I don't, because I don't know you so I'm bound not to know where I _am__._"

The red-haired woman looks surprised. The other woman's hair turns a light shade of green, and I look at it suspiciously—it's starting to freak me out. Is she doing it herself, or was she born a freak?

"You're in London, England. But if you're talking about this room, well, then you'd be in this room." The multi-haired woman grins. _London? England? They have some seriously weird names. _

"Never heard of those places." I shrug. There's a silence. "What?"

"Never heard of _England?_" Sirius demands, eyebrows raised.

"No."

"Whoa."

The old guy chuckles; I'm starting to dislike him even more. "How old you, Edward?"

"Seventeen."

Thankfully, there's no joke about how _short _I am for my age. I am 5'11'', thank you very much—a fact that I am not afraid to rub into other people's faces. Like Mustang. And Winry.

_I miss them._

"Ah, just about old enough!" the old man continues, laughing—it's the only way to describe it—merrily. "How would you like to enroll in school, Mr. Elric?" his blue eyes twinkle in a way I don't like. "I am the headmaster of Hogwarts, School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, you see: Albus Dumbledore." The others make sounds of incredulity, their eyes wide and brows contorted in disbelief. He continues regardless—"I'm afraid we didn't get to introduce ourselves, did we? That over there is Sirius Black. Next to him is Nymphadora Tonks—"

"Don't call me that." Tonks, apparently, mumbles, almost as an afterthought.

"—and behind her is Molly Weasley. Do you recognize any of these names?"

I shake my head. Then, thinking over his words, I pick out the ones that seem most ridiculous. _Magic? Hell no. And I'm too old to be in school. Especially in a school of freaking magic—which doesn't exist. _A flash of white passes in my mind, and that Goddamned grin—

"No way."

Albus Dumbledore seems amused. "You don't recognize us?"

"To the school offer," I growl at him, my defensive side coming out instinctively. "I don't believe in magic."

The others look even more surprised than they did before. "A Muggle?" Molly says.

_(What the hell did she just call me?)_

"I don't believe that," Sirius says. I raise an eyebrow at him. "You just showed up, with this large crack, in the middle of the room all bloody and in those weird clothes—" I look down and see he's right. I'm still in my military uniform (which I sorely despise), gloves and blood stain intact. I grimace; _that's_ _Al's blood. _Why do I know that? Why was Al bleeding? A streak of panic flashes through my gut. _I'm missing something...but what is it?_

"That looks like one of those army uniforms for the Muggles," Tonks says, using that weird word again.

Even if I don't know what a _Muggle_ is, I suppose I can confirm at least part of her statement. "That's because it is. A military uniform."

There's another silence. This time, I notice Molly put her hands to her mouth, eyes wide. "Military? But you're so young!"

I snort. "Ma'am, I've been in the military for five years, since I was twelve. It's almost nothing now." _Except the fact that I'm still the youngest, even now, _I add in my mind. Dumbledore is frowning, now, and looking at me with exceptionally observant eyes.

"Edward, if you don't mind me calling you that, may I ask why you don't believe in magic?" he asks lightly.

"I only believe in alchemy. Have ever since I was four, and you won't stop me. I don't believe I have a drop of magic in me." Sirius and Molly look confused; Tonks looks at me like I'm crazy; but Dumbledore looks like if he could cheer, he would.

"Alchemy is a dead art, my dear boy." Even while he says it, Dumbledore is smiling and doesn't look like he actually believes it himself. I narrow my eyes at him. "Oh yeah?" I clap my hands lightly, then touch the bed. "What's this, then?"

I feel a hum of energy in my chest, and close my eyes as I feel the familiar wind, the burst of electrical light, and the flow of power from me to the bed sheets. Soon, I hold a tightly wound figure of Tonks.

She looks at the little figure of herself; after a moment, she takes it from me, turning it over in her hands. "Bloody hell," she whispers, eyes big.

"That looks exactly like you!" Sirius seems to be in awe over the little thing. "That is very cool."

"It's alchemy." I say proudly.

"I see..." Dumbledore looks irrationally happy. "Mister Elric, how would you like to be a teacher at our school, rather than joining as a student?"

I blink as Molly nearly chokes in disbelief. "A _teacher?_" Memories of training with Izumi pass through my mind...but that isn't the type of teaching he's talking about. Vague images of me and Al in the second grade, with textbooks the size of our torsos and the teacher always throwing chalk at us flash across my mind. Does he want me to act like that? Is he _insane?_

"Me? Are you sure?"

Dumbledore laughs, _again_. Does this guy never get tired or something? "Yes. Disregarding your age, I see you are very experienced, Edward. I would like you to teach alchemy at Hogwarts."

_But why?_ Why would he want me as a teacher; why would I ever want to teach a bunch of kids? "What's in it for me?"

"Teaching students in exchange for sleeping quarters, food, and unlimited access to our expansive library." I perk up at the thought of a library. "A war is on our horizon, and I feel that learning alchemy may help save our students' lives. You look like you want to obtain something, Edward." He looks suddenly serious, his eyes boring into mine.

_Well, he's right about that._ It's niggling at the back of my mind, that _thing_ I can't quite remember. _Al's blood is all over me. _This is all consuming; this is vitally important; _why can't I remember?_

Molly has left, now, to retrieve food and clean clothes, but the other three look at me expectantly. I think of the Gate and how the Truth—with that knowledge I so desperately need—is still lingering in a far corner of my mind. I think of Alphonse and Winry, _(is he alive God I don't know anymore)._ I think of the home that they both have made for me, and I know in an instant that I will get back to them, no matter the cost. And if Dumbledore is giving me a chance to do it, to figure out what I am missing... I'm not going to give it up this easily.

So I look at him and grin for the first time today. "You got yourself a deal, old man."

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_[Eleven hours, twenty-one minutes.]_

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	3. t w o : Diabolic Clockwork

**_- _**_Laura - _

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**. c h a p t e r t w o .  
Diabolical Clockwork**

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As it turns out, the place I've found myself in is a house. A rather _large_ house, by the looks of things, with at least three stories and a sprawling floor plan. Aside from the four adults I've already met, Molly's husband lives there, along with a "Remus Lupin" and five teenagers. It seems like more of a hotel to me, but I'm given no time to voice my opinion. Molly comes back downstairs with a t-shirt and shorts—_must be summer here...odd, it was autumn back home_—and holds them out to me.

But...there is the matter of my automail. I usually don't mind _too_ much when people know of it, but with these _Englanders_ (or whatever they're called)...who knows what they'll say?

"Do you have pants and a long-sleeved shirt?"

Molly looks very surprised. "It's practically boiling outside! Why would you—"

"Please?" If I walk around with automail exposed in the heat, I could fry an egg on it. And as delicious as that sounds...

She gives me a strange look but retreats back upstairs. "If I may ask, Edward," Dumbledore begins slowly, "What happened before you arrived here? That is an extraordinary amount of blood..."

My stomach twists unpleasantly. _I. Don't. Know._ But then..._oh my God._"We were...in a fight." I can barely choke the words out; all I can see is Al lying, lifeless, in that back alley. So much blood—_so much_ _blood_—I had no choice but to—

"We?"

"Me...and my brother..." Dammit, why did I have to be so far away _now?_ Who knows if my transmutation worked? I meant it to be similar to a soul bound, not a true human transmutation, but I have not lost any more limbs... I can't handle this; Al is lying, maybe dead, in some alley back home... I choke back another sob as I ask, desperate for a miracle—"He didn't show up with me, did he?" It is an empty hope, I know, even before the words are fully formed. Surely, they would have mentioned him if he had.

"I'm afraid not." The twinkling in the old man's eyes has dimmed a bit. "That is his blood on your uniform? You seem unharmed..."

I nod jerkily, not trusting myself to speak, even as I make the strange realization that there had _definitely_ been a bullet in my gut ten minutes ago. But that doesn't matter now...nothing matters...nothing except Alphonse and what I've done to him. If I hadn't been such a stupid, arrogant _ass_, none of this would have happened. Al and I would be home by now, arguing over who would have to cook dinner, perhaps phoning Winry and assuring her that yes_, _we're _fine_—

But we aren't fine. Nothing is fine anymore.

I can't stop thinking of home, no matter how hard I try.

"Here you are, dear," Molly calls me back from my thoughts abruptly. "They might be a bit long—Ron's taller than you. If you get too warm, I'd be happy to get you something—"

"No, this is fine," I interject, trying desperately to keep my mind occupied. "When do I have to start teaching?"

"Term starts September first," Dumbledore says. "You should probably get lesson plans started soon, though it'll be easier for you. Every year will be at the same level, so you should only have to make up one for the whole term."

_Fantastic_. Of _course_ that made me feel better. Even though our deal was logical, made on good terms, and beneficial to both parties, I didn't necessarily have to _like_ it. _And how will this help Al? _"How far away is that?"

His eyebrows rise ever so slightly. "In just over three weeks' time. Today is August sixth."

"Huh. Okay." Last I checked, it's already halfway through September, but in the grand scheme of things, it's a stupid thing to argue about. "So...where am I staying?" Quite honestly, I hope it's somewhere nearby; I'm totally caked in blood, constantly reminding me of what was missing. _(AlphonseAlphonseAlphonse—) _"Is there a shower somewhere?"

"Upstairs. Here, I'll show you..." Molly seems to consider handing over the new clothes, but there is far too much blood on me to keep them clean for long. She leads me upstairs, past a group of gaping teenagers and toward a door halfway down the hall. "Just yell if you need anything else. Dinner will be ready soon, so come down whenever you're done. You're so thin..."

I shoot her an odd look; I haven't been called scrawny in years, since before me and Al started lessons with Teacher. Maybe it's the culture in this part of the world; I'll have to look it up in the library later. _I'll need a map, too. Find out how far away Amestris is so I can get back._

"Thanks," is all I say in reply. She smiles brightly, lays the clothes on the counter, and leaves me alone. I strip off the blood-soaked uniform quickly and reach out without really thinking to turn the water on. _(Can't stand this much longer—Al's life is all over me—) _The cold metal jolts against my skin as I turn the handle.

_Wait..._

_Cold?_

The hell? I used my right hand! I look down in disbelief at my right arm to see pale _flesh_ attached to my shoulder. How have I not noticed that before? I move it up and down, mesmerized by the sight. My gaze slides to my left leg; that has returned, too! Did Truth return them? But _why_? I had gone to _give more up_, to revive—

_No. Stop thinking about that._

I stand, mesmerized, in front of the mirror, inspecting my newly-restored arm and leg. It strikes me as odd that there are no scars where the ports were attached; surely, after all the bolting and grafting that happens during automail surgery, there would be something irregular about my shoulder and thigh. Why is Truth in such a giving mood...?

But there is no time to think on that, and it isn't as if I'm complaining. I step into the shower and scrub myself clean for probably twenty minutes, determined to get rid of every scrap of evidence of the fact that _my brother had been dead in that alley. _I do my best to grab everything with my right hand...this must have been what Al felt like when he was restored, only it was his_ whole body_. The sensation is nearly overwhelming to me, and it is only in two limbs. No _wonder_ he had been so touchy-feely... Even now, six months after the Promised Day, he still loved (_loves)_ to hold things (_especially kittens,_ I laugh hollowly to myself), and doesn't seem to mind whether the room is zero or a hundred degrees, as long as he can _feel_ it.

_Dammit!_ My thoughts always seem to wander back to Al, no matter how hard I try not to worry. Surely, something has gone right. I'm not back in the alley, minus a few body parts, which is what seems to happen in a rebound. I was in a foreign country, _plus_ a few limbs. Maybe Truth's decided to cut us some slack and has healed Al, or at least kept him from dying long enough. The alley is not that far away from Headquarters; surely, someone else walking by will notice him. They'll bring him to a hospital, and he'll be _fine_, because it was only a _cut_, not a huge _gash_ slicing halfway through his chest—

_Fuck._

I turn off the water sharply, ignoring the unsettled feeling in my stomach. I just need to find a map and ask someone where the train station is. Surely, I can't be too far away. It will take a few days—a week, tops—to get back to Al, and once he's healed (_but I'm fine...he must be, too!_) we can go back to our lives in Central. Never again will I doubt Al's instincts. Despite what everyone says, I am no genius; it is _Al,_ always Al, who is right. I wish I would have _listened to someone else_ for once in my life; then, maybe, we wouldn't be in this mess at all.

I pull on the borrowed clothes after toweling myself dry, remembering with a bit of a grin that I'll be able to ask Molly for some summer clothes after all. It's been _years_ since I've been able to run around in a t-shirt and shorts, not worrying about who would question the automail. Wringing out my hair into the shower one more time and tying it into a low ponytail, I consider the bloody lump of uniform laying carefully on the floor. I had tried to fold it so that the least bloody part was touching the floor, but it was difficult when the whole thing was soaked. I don't remember there being _quite_ that much blood...my stomach turns just looking at it.

_Stop it!_

I decide to ask Molly later what should be done with it, and leave the bathroom, retracing my steps back downstairs to the kitchen. Everyone in the house, it seems, is seated around the large table, and they all look up when I step inside. "Oh, Ed!" Molly says immediately, hurrying over and ushering me to a nearby chair. "Help yourself to whatever you'd like, there's plenty of everything..."

I sit down gratefully between Sirius Black and a red-haired girl. "You look much better, now that you're not all bloody," Sirius says casually, reaching across me to grab a bowl of mashed potatoes. "You're sure you're not hurt? That was a hell of a lot of—"

"It wasn't mine," I say shortly, not wishing to continue the conversation as the queasiness in my stomach hits an all-time high. Sure, some of it _was_ mine, but apparently I've been miraculously healed. No need to worry. "I'm fine."

"Whose was it?" the girl asks, her eyebrows raised. "It looked like you just got out of a bloody _war_!"

I feel my body stiffen. Sure, it might be a valid question, but I sure as hell don't want to answer. Luckily, Molly takes this opportunity to pile some more corn onto the girl's plate.

"Ginny, dear, you need to eat more..."

Huh. "Ginny" isn't particularly thin either. Maybe Molly's conviction that I'm skinny isn't so unique; apparently _every_ teenager she comes across "needs to eat more." I almost laugh. _Good thing she didn't see Al right after we got him back..._she surely would have an aneurysm trying to get him enough food.

Anyway. This provides a suitable distraction from our conversation, and I'm immensely relieved as I piled huge amounts of steak, potatoes, and carrots on my plate...and that was just for starters. I dig in, relishing in the delicious taste of the meat, and listen more than participate in the conversations going on around me.

_Al would really like this,_ I think glumly. He's always been more of a "people" person than me, and all of my new housemates seem very friendly. _They'd get along great. And all this food..._ He still eats absolutely _anything_ put in front of him, just to try the taste._  
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"So you're teaching alchemy at Hogwarts this year?" the girl sitting across from me—the only teenager without red hair—asks me curiously, snapping me out of my thoughts. "I didn't think it was still around...what can it do?"

"Stuff." I really don't feel like explaining it as I reach for some applesauce. The nausea in my stomach hasn't gone away, but I'm still quite hungry. "You'll learn in class, if you take it."

"I plan to," she says brightly. "Dumbledore said there are prerequisite classes, Ancient Runes and Arithmancy, so the classes will be small. But apparently we'd be lost without that background..."

"Mm. Hopefully you all aren't total idiots. I'll have to kick you out if you are," I say, grinning a bit at her. _Distract. Forget how much he and Al would get along, just focus on getting yourself home..._

Ginny snorts fantastically from my left. "Hermione, an idiot? She's the smartest person in school! I bet she'll be just as good as you in a few months..."

It's my turn to snort. "I've been studying this since I was _three._ Once _you_ have fourteen years of experience—"

I never get the chance to finish my sentence. The nausea suddenly hits a new high, and I stand up quickly, intending to bolt for the bathroom upstairs. But I don't make it that far_; _it comes up my throat faster than I can move. Before I can react, it is all over the the table, dinner, and Hermione. It takes me a moment to realize what is wrong: the sick doesn't look like half-digested steak and stomach bile. Instead, it is a bright, sickening red.

I can only stare for a moment; my mind refuses to process what I am seeing. I just puked blood. I just _puked blood_. The only person I've ever known to do that was Teacher, and she—

_Oh, shit._

Maybe the Gate did take something, after all.

The kitchen is eerily silent. Hermione seems frozen in place, looking down at the blood covering her shirt in a sort of horrified shock. (It's on her face and in her hair, too, though I think it best not to mention it to her.) I collapse back into my chair; the world is spinning; nothing is making sense; _my guts are gone_...?

The movement seems to shock everyone else into motion; Tonks dashes to Hermione, swishing her wand and making the blood vanish. Sirius is standing over me in a second, followed quickly by Molly; they'r both shouting something that I can't understand. My vision swims dangerously, but I try to lift my hand to wave them away, to tell them I am fine. My hand doesn't seem to want to respond. The two are yelling louder, but their voices are fading away. My vision is going black, too, and only one thought crosses my mind before I pass out—

_This'll make everything a hell of a lot harder._

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_[Eleven hours, eighteen minutes.]_

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	4. t h r e e : At the End of the World

**_- _**_Maya__ - _

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**. c h a p t e r t h r e e .  
At the End of the World**

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**PAUSE.**

Eternalism.

Time passes in a version of eternalism. In which the concept of time is relative and non-relative all at once. The past, the present, and the future all exist; they are all relative to one another, but they are each a full

**STOP.**

Stop. This is now.

So let's think about it for a second.

Here. Now. Everything, the present, is moving toward the future, moving away from the past. Here. Now. Everything is in slow motion.

When your brain is taking in substantial amounts of data at once, and your levels of concentration are accelerating beyond the conceivable reaches of average, it all slows down. Everything. Everything is moving in slow motion and you're seeing so much at once that you can hardly comprehend any of it at all. Adrenaline pumps through your veins like water that courses through the harsh rapids of a river; your heartbeat is running out of control.

Ten pints of blood in the human body and all of it is moving at a rate of three feet per second. It takes a single drop of blood about a minute after it leaves your heart to come back to it.

To an alchemist, everything in the world is circles. Not because they think only in circles, but because they see in circles. They're always there; we just don't always see them. Life. A cycle. When everything connects, it's hard to separate each moment.

So then, would this moment flow into the next? And would I even notice?

**. **

**.**

**.**

**.**

**PLAY.**

I gasp for breath.

There's something in the back of my mind that screams at me. _This is worse, _it says. It cries the words and they drive into my brain wielding knives and leaving searing, scorched trails in their path. _This is worse than you think it is. _That something, every bit of it, is telling me that, _obviously, _that monster Truth has done something awful. He's given me hope and he's ripped it all away again. He's given me my limbs and just enough time to notice, and now he's going to rip apart my life, inch by inch, cell by cell, so that I can feel the regret that tastes like rust on my tongue.

The metallic tinge of blood, that is...

...and this is because my guts are gone. _My guts are gone. _I wonder why I'm not dead, and when I gasp and gasp and reach for oxygen with the panic of it all, I wonder if he's taken my lungs too. Perhaps he's torn apart my trachea, plucked each individual alveoli away from my bronchioles until my breaths don't even have meaning anymore. Perhaps he's stuffed it all in my esophagus and carried it off with that too. Perhaps I'm already dead, in some sort of perpetual, confusing state of torture.

But no. I remember that there are people here, and they are all moving in slow motion. They gather around me, as the haze of sharpness gathers in the center of my vision and expands outward, and I see each individual pore of their skin. As I think, _I can do that, _because I know what they consist of and how to piece them together. I remember then, too, that I could never do that, because there is no soul that I can ever reach. Not theirs. Not my mother's. Not my brother's. Each soul is so unique that I cannot even be close to touching it.

And then I wonder why I'm even thinking of this.

There's that rusty taste of regret I was talking about earlier, there in my mouth. I feel my precious life-liquid as it slides over my gums and I run my tongue across my teeth just to taste it one more time. It's reality, there, in my mouth, and it makes everything that's not moving start moving again. Then, it's all too fast. Nothing makes sense anymore.

But then, in my despair, there is hope.

Hope in this: _my guts are gone. _My guts are gone! I want to jump for joy!

Because then, because if I have to pay this price for my trespassing, my transgressions against the laws of the world, there must be something in return. There must be equivalent exchange. And—_please, please, oh please—_does this mean Alphonse is alive? It must! It must mean that Al is alive; I must have succeeded. This is what I've been waiting for. Something that has sunk within me takes flight and I feel so _relieved_. This is a better feeling then I've had in quite a while. This is transcendence, and for a second I just let myself be, let myself think about the happy things. _Al is alive._ I think. Then I think about the way the wood of the table feels beneath the skin of my right hand, the way the air gently brushes against the calf of my left leg, and I feel a smile pulling onto my lips. My limbs are back but my guts are gone. Thank _G__od_, if he exists, that this has happened. _Al is alive. _

_._

_._

There is water. It is all around me, in every direction, and I am suffocating; I am drowning. I breathe but there is only liquid inside of me, and everywhere there is unending pressure. It pushes through my skin and I feel it growing behind my eyelids, before taking off and spreading through the rest of my body, patterned like varicose veins. Spidery trails of encumbrance that pull through me and leave fissures in their wake. The water pulls in. I feel all of this in a second.

In another second, I realize that this is consciousness.

I have been encompassed by the never-ending comfort of darkness, and I want to go back. Funny, it's funny, how this burden, this manifestation of heaviness, a weight I cannot lift, comes with my being aware of who I am. I want to close my eyes and surrender. My eyes are already closed, though, so there's no way to escape.

So I inhale; I gasp for air. Real air, this time, and it rushes into my lungs - my lungs are still there, but my guts, my guts are gone—and my fingers wrap tight around the cloth that is surrounding me. A steady stream of oxygen is pulled through my nose and I catch the passing aroma of freshly laundered sheets, of alcohol, of dust, and scents that are strange to me, that I cannot identify—but they remind me very much of the smell of the herb gardens so many women carefully tended to in Dublith, lined up in the neighbors' backyards. I wonder idly why Teacher never had an herb garden to take care of. It's probably because she spent so much time taking care of us.

A creak, a whisper, and then there is another presence in the room. Someone else exists here now, besides myself, and I press my eyelids together tighter to stop myself from looking to see who it might be. The entirety of my lucidity returns to me in a quick flash of realization, and I can hear the intruders' light footfalls approaching my bedside.

"This is him." This is a girl's voice; there are two people in the room, and I quickly recognize who is speaking. Hermione, the girl who I had unceremoniously covered in a heavy coating of my insides. I can't seem to find it in myself to feel guilty about that.

My eyes snap open and it is dark in the room. There are two steady orbs of light, and they are coming from the tips of sticks held within two teenagers' hands. _Magic,_ the acknowledgment comes from the very forefront of my mind, and it makes me suddenly angry. Magic! Magic! Ridiculous! They don't see that I'm awake, so I work through the dizziness and the nausea that has carried over from my incident earlier. (How long has it been?) I take a deep breath; I have to calm myself.

The boy's light comes in my direction, and I look at it with interest. The moment he sees me, he is startled backward so quickly that I fear he will fall. I sit up just as fast and raise my arms in front of me, half possessed by the instinct to clap my hands together and transmute my right arm into a weapon. I remember that this is very much impossible now, and my arms shake at the sudden pause of impulse.

"Holy... He's awake!" The boy exclaims this out loud, as if the girl wasn't already looking at me with a strange mix of curiosity, empathy, and inquisitive discomfort. How do you address someone who has just vomited blood all down your front? I wonder what she will say.

"How are you feeling?" She asks, her head moving to the side, and I don't think I have it within myself to answer a question I don't really know the answer to. Wonderful, though, I actually feel quite wonderful. Shall I inform her of that? I feel _so_ _great_ because I've come to the conclusion that my brother is still alive, and I know this because my guts are gone. That's it. How are _you _feeling?

"Fine." I answer offhand, it is an automatic response, and I look at the boy curiously. Who is he? "Who are you?"

"Harry Potter," he answers just as automatically as I had replied to Hermione. My hands fall down to my sides slowly, and I feel naked, vulnerable, in this bed before them. I'm not some invalid they need to check up on.

"Harry Potter?" I ask, thinking back to conversations I have overheard, Harry Potter the Boy-Who-Lived, yes? Harry Potter the Chosen One, yes? Harry Potter, the boy that everyone expects to save their lives, yes? He doesn't look like anything but a scrawny little brat to me. "_You're _Harry Potter."

"Yes." He looks indignant, but I wasn't necessarily trying to insult him. I don't really care if I did. "_I'm _Harry Potter. Who are you?"

I don't say anything, because I have no idea whether it's the right idea to tell him who I am or not.

"His name is Edward," Hermione takes it out of my hands, and I glare at her without thought. "He's going to teach alchemy at school this year!"

"Alchemy?" Harry asks, "I thought alchemy had died out ages ago."

"Why does everyone seem to think that?" I ask no one in particular, before laying back onto the small bed and turning my back to the two. "I'm assuming you're not supposed to be here right now, so you'd better get going."

The two freeze, before shuffling toward the door. "Yeah, I guess so..." Luckily, they didn't miss the obvious dismissal in my tone. There is something about the way they were acting, like they were surprised at my rudeness. The thought makes me smile, just a little. Then another thought tears through my mind that makes me smile even more.

_Al is alive. _

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The next time I wake up, I actually think.

Now that I know (_Al is alive. Al is alive. Al is alive._) that Al is fine, (because my guts are gone) there's so many more questions that I have to address. Like, where the fuck am I? Or, how in hell am I still alive? How about, why do I have my arm and leg back? And, why are there crazy "magic" people everywhere? Then, quite possibly, what is London, England?

And while the realization that most likely Al was still alive assuaged some of the pain caused by the raging maniac of a guilt monster let loose on my conscience, it posed a few more mysteries in itself. There is still something wrong. It doesn't seem equivalent. The Truth has never dealt punishments so sparingly; he has never been so kind, and I have always assumed he has simply forgotten how to do so, or rather, has never known kindness at all. This reeks of erroneous calculations, though, and I struggle to find a way to fix it in my mind. I have to get some information, have to find Al, have to make sure he is okay, and I have to do it _soon. _

On another note, these people are painfully trustworthy, so much that it makes my possibly absent stomach flip around with the queasiness of suspicion. Who does that? Someone appears out of nowhere, and you just offer them a job at your school? There is something much bigger than me here, and I can feel it. There is something imminent about my situation, something nagging endlessly at the back of my mind.

_Just look. Just look a little harder. _It prickles and tingles and I screw up my face in concentration. I try, but there is nothing there. I don't understand. Something is going to happen—I just know it—and there is nothing that I can do about it. _Fuck. _

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_[Eleven hours, eleven minutes.]_

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	5. f o u r : Burning the Way to Hell

_- Annie -_

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**. c h a p t e r f o u r .  
Burning the Way to Hell**

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**REPLAY_._**

Magic.

Ff, such a stupid thing.

Maybe there _is _more punishment in this than just loss of organs.

(No, there _has _to be.)

These people are irritating me to no end—and they are directly insulting everything I've ever known or believed in since I was in _diapers_ with their 'magic.' Including the two most important pillars of my life: humanity and Equivalent Exchange.

However, I take a page out of Al's book (he isn't an ambassador of Amestris for being cute—though that might have some play in it) and give them the benefit of the doubt, decide to think about this more… maturely, and give them a _chance._ Al, were he here, would tell me to—wouldn't he have?

Oh… why did I even _consider…_

**.**

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**.**

**SKIP.**

"I don't get it," I state, as clearly as possible.

Hermione sighs and drops her wand to her side, the opposite hand coming to rest on her left hip. "What don't you get?"

I gape for a minute (I find it almost comical, how she takes a cautious step backward), as if it's the most obvious thing in the world… and it is. "_What_ _is there to get? _It's just… just waving around this stick and saying senseless words! I don't… Where's the _theory _and the _logic?" _I cough to end my sentence, pursing my lips at the action.

She fumbles for a second, as if looking for something to respond with before getting suddenly _defensive. _"Ff, what about Alchemy? It's just another branch of magic! You're being hypocritical!"

… Oh dear… I think I may have burst a blood vessel…

"Oh ho _ho_! _Alchemy_? A branch of _magic?_! You are _sorely _mistaken, missy! Alchemy is a _science! _Comprehension, Deconstruction, Reconstruction! Alchemy is _based _on theory and logic while your 'magic' has absolutely _none _of either! It isn't just silly wand waving and incantations! Body, mind, soul, energy, science, experimentation, chemistry, biology! Alchemy is the unadulterated quintessence of coherence and ideology! Circles, Transmutations, the manipulation of constituents! It isn't as simple and thoughtless as waving around that wooden stick you call a catalyst! The most alluring aspect of the art is its potency and philosophy! _Everything _can be explained!" I take a gasp of breath after my rant and fall to my knees before the coffee table, running my hands over the flat spruce.

"See? Wood. Spruce. What are the components of spruce? Cellulose, Glucomannan, Glucuronoxylan, other polysaccharides, Lignin, and extractives. Our next question is 'how much?' As in comprehension you have to understand your material down to the last bit, Logic, see?" I shoot a quick glare at the girl (ignoring her wide-eyed expression) before continuing. "Spruce is made up of roughly forty percent Cellulose, seventeen percent Glucomannan, ten percent Glucuronoxylan, three percent other polysaccharides, twenty eight percent Lignin, and two percent of other extractives."

I quickly snatch a pencil from nearby and draw out a circle quickly before working on a simple matrix composed mostly of triangles. Once finished, I press my hand to the circle; the familiar static energy of a transmutation surrounds me, as well as blue electrical sparks dancing around my tanned digits. Standing, I grasp the wooden sword firmly in my hand.

"Now, I have to infer that you 'wizards' and 'witches' at your 'magic school' don't get much exercise—much less have it in your curriculum—" I reach a hand out to poke Hermione in the stomach gently to support my statement (she draws back in a slightly surprised and offended fashion). "—but with alchemy, you cannot simply train the mind, but also the body!" I twirl the sword in my hand before pressing my hands together and transmuting the wooden weapon back into the table with a grin. "Which also has logic and—" I cough, "—and theory behind it!" I smother another cough back into my raw throat.

"Tell me, what do you expect to do if your wand happens to bre-eak or get away from yoo-u?" I choke down yet another cough, giving small huffs of breath into my hand as my chest tries to force them back up. I glance up at the brunette, who has this expression of 'I don't know and I absolutely _hate _it' that Winry occasionally gets when she and I have fights and I use words _too big for her_. I frown.

I miss Winry…

I miss Al…

I smirked, however, at this expression. "Exactly-y!" A cough forces its way up and out of my mouth, followed by another and another until they make themselves into a series of coughs—I bring my hand up to my mouth and sit back on the couch. The coughs become wetter and wetter until a warm liquid spills out of my mouth and slides down my chin—into my open palm.

Hermione immediately snaps out of 'debate mode' (though, she wasn't really debating as much as being argued with in a one-sided fashion) and rushes to make sure I am all right (or, at least, not on the verge of passing out), while staying far enough away not to get vomited on. "Oh my gosh, are you alright?"

I half-contemplate responding with 'do I _look _alright to you?' before shaking off the thought and preparing to respond seriously before the entire _household_ rushes over and _clutters around me _to the point that I can't even obtain the small amount of oxygen I am now.

"I'm _fine!_" I hiss, wiping the remaining blood from my chin and fumbling with my bloody hand before simply letting it fall, palm up, into my lap.

"That doesn't look fine to me!" shouts the scrawny black-haired Boy-Who-Lived kid (God, what an odd title, he got 'the Boy-Who-Lived' for not dying when he was supposed to, and I got 'Fullmetal'? Huh, guess I win) from the sidelines. He seems slightly panicked—oh, right, that is his first time seeing the incident.

I shrug and get to my feet, blinking at the slight dizziness momentarily before pushing through the huddle of people gathered in the living room.

"Well, I _am_ fine! I don't need anyone worrying over me like some mother hen!" I giggle sheepishly and lift my clean hand to rub at the back of my neck.

_I miss Al... and Winry._

I round a corner and shouted over my shoulder, "Hey, does this place have a library?"

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I growl in frustration, flipping the book in my grasp closed sharply, tossing it onto the table violently, and shoving to my feet. There really _isn't _any theory to this terrible subject—and these wizards seem to expect their magic to fix every worry they have!

I march out of the study and into the hallway, rounding the corner to find the group of teenagers in this giant house all huddled at the top of the stairs. They're holding what looks like... holy shit... is that an _ear? _I gape for a moment before hearing a mumble of voices from the somewhat realistic object and huffing. Magic.

"What are you doing?" I ask, stepping forward curiously to nudge my way into the cluster of kids. Fred and George (as I'd learned earlier today) turn and grin at me, shamelessly announcing their mischief. "We're spying on an order meeting—" Fred (or George) begins before George (or Fred) finishes with: "—so, shh!"

I blink and nod slightly before pushing my way forward a bit again to listen better. The ear is slightly muffled and not entirely clear, but it's clear the Order is talking about some sort of 'Ministry Official' that will be teaching at their school—they seem worried about this matter. Pursing my lips I scan my recent memory to find anything pertaining to this, only remembering something I'd read in one of their books about what the Ministry was. (It seems like some sort of...not-very-aggressive government that was more of a paperwork sort of place, and not entirely a 'build-a-transmutation-circle-over-the-entire-country' sort of place. How could that be offensive?)

Tilting my head, I mull over this. It could only really be a threat if this...Ministry...was seeking to take dominance over the school. Seeing as these people are more...peace based, and the text books I've found are somewhat...offensive magic based—I would assume the Ministry would want the place to be less violent. How could this be harmful? I sigh slightly in thought and roll my neck. It would be handy to have offensive magic—if this war were to escalate or these people would have to defend themselves—so that's definitely a problem...

I blink as I hear sighs of defeat from the ear and raise my eyebrows—I could fix this, easily. We've had problems, though more severe, where this has happened. Pursing my lips, I vault over the banister and land in front of the Order's door with a soft thud. I shake out my legs slightly and rise to my full height before putting my hands together and pressing them to the door and the door frame. I peer through the crack to see the lock on the door crumble away with rust.

Smirking to myself in a satisfied manner, I push the door open and stride in just as someone is saying, "—Can't necessarily do anything if we don't know what she will be doing."

I find myself an empty chair and fall into it, squaring myself to sit up straight. "The Ministry official?"

All eyes turn on me.

I blink. "What?"

The man with the single blue (is that automail?) eye stares over at me with furrowed eyebrows. "... How would you know that?"

I raise an eyebrow skeptically. "One—the walls aren't that thick, neither is the door. Two—you have all the kids in the house sitting up there listening through a magic ear."

Molly groans loudly and gets to her feet, and many upset voices come from upstairs. _"Ed!"_

I simply smirk and turn back. "There's an easy solution to that. If you don't know what she's doing, find out."

"It's not that simple—"

"Yes, it is," I cut Crazy-Eye off insistently. "If you don't know, get someone to get close to her—he could find out what she's up to for you."

"Why would she trust anyone at that school?" Sirius asks.

"It is a woman, right?" I wait for Sirius to nod. "Well, there's your answer—charms and charisma." I smirked.

"Wouldn't she think we're trying to get to her?" Sirius questions, again.

"We are trying to get to her, Padfoot..." Remus deadpans.

"Well, don't you have any new teachers? Someone that she would know isn't hell-bent on following the senile old man with the facial hair and the creepy cheerfulness?"

Everyone stares blankly at me.

"What?"

"Yeah, we do have a new teacher—_me_."

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_[Eleven hours, seven minutes.]_

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	6. f i v e : Requiem for Lost Dreams

_- Summer - _

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**. c h a p t e r f i v e .  
Requiem for Lost Dreams**

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**PAUSE_._**

Do you know what it feels like to suffer?

To feel like all the world is dying, to feel like your breath has been sucked out of your lungs—_which may or may not be there but they are or they aren't—_and your body is feeling like it's being crushed and your mind is folding in itself and you just feel the _pain._ And it's _unbearable__._

And then there's that _desire _afterward, the lust to make other people suffer. To make other people suffer the same way you (I) did. You see, nobody ever gets out of hardship alive without having the rose of a dark seed planted in their heart, ready to bloom into something dreadful. No one is able to forgive easily, no matter how easy-going they seem. It isn't in the greedy human nature.

I went through hell. Because I went through hell, I wanted everyone else to see the same things I saw, regardless of the pain and repercussions. Some dark part of me wanted them to suffer. That dark part was dominant. I wanted to see them, see them and drag them down to hell with me.

Humans were selfish. It was evident—there was no human that was erased of their sin of avarice.

I was _(am) _the same.

I wasn't just the exception to everything. I was the same. I was human. I would forever _be_ just a human.

And perhaps that is why we suffer—because we are _just _human, and _just_ human isn't good enough. Not anymore.

**.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

**PLAY.**

"Ha. Please. No way in fucking hell."

Their faces turn from hopeful and clever to downturned and despairing. I don't care—let them feel however they want. This is my decision, and they have no right to push that on me so quickly.

"And why not, boy? You were the one to—"

"Bring the idea up, yeah, yeah, but that doesn't mean I'm the one who has to do it." My gaze finds the man with the automail eye whizzing in its socket. An abstract thought flashes—_was there an accident? Was it there on purpose? Did he scream when he lost it and did he go mad—_but I stare at him long and hard, taking in his features of countless scars painted across flesh. "Get someone else to do your dirty work for you. I'm not volunteering."

I imagine a majestic exit. I can feel their prying eyes at my back, wondering how I managed to make my tone so final when I was throwing up precious red liquid only a few minutes ago. I imagine them curious, and they stare after me with a lingering scent of defeat clinging to their bodies.

But even though I imagine, there aree only a few things that actually became reality.

My footsteps sound cold and hard against the wooden floors, and there is a burning coil inside my stomach (if I have one). It unravels and boils, slithering around and spreading heat to the rest of my body and settling itself at the pit of my torso.

I am jerked back by a boy; Harry, with his green eyes hard and untrusting, looks as if the weight of this world was burdened upon his shoulders. He thinks he is the only one suffering. "What was that?" he demands. I decide that I don't like him.

I don't like his simple naivety; I don't like the fact that he thinks he is the only person in the world who's got it bad. I can tell—there are people out there, starving and poor and hurting and tortured, and he doesn't care. He doesn't even think of them; his mind doesn't wander to the possibility that there would be blood shed in his name and that he would become dirty, spoiled. But right now, his eyes are painfully innocent, they make me want to rip his arms off and _get him off me _before that innocence drips onto me and removes who I am. Who I have become.

"None of your business, evidently." I take my arm back—_my right arm, even though it's not automail it has muscle for some reason and it's not hard to detach myself from him—_and sneer. He looks surprised; obviously, even though I am a stranger, he thought me worthy of being trusted. He put some of his good faith in me. I am not his definition of "good." I am not him.

"What were you guys talking about?" he presses on, fingers clenching and unclenching. Behind him comes a girl—two, I see after a while, and those twins with another red head. I eye them all, with a predatory purpose. They are all like him. They are all so unaware...it makes me sick.

I address him in the most cold-cut way possible; the talk with those adults dampened my mood, and I don't feel the need to talk to them any longer. If I do, my head will fucking _burst._ "Was your name mentioned?" He opens his mouth to say something, but I cut him off before he can reply. "Was your presence called for? Did I need your opinion? Do you need to know any of my business?" His mouth snaps closed in shock, and I find myself pleased to see him so stunned.

"The correct answer to those would be 'no', so fuck off."

The redhead, the slightly taller male one, takes a step forward; his eyebrows furrow and his lips are set in a scowl. "Hey, now wait a minute there, mate—what gives you the right—"

"I have every right," I snap at him, patience running dangerously thin. "I don't care if he's the fucking Boy-Who-Lived—he's _human_, and I don't see him as any more special than the rest of us for such a simple thing as _not dying._ If he gets fame for that, why don't I? I've survived up until this point—" _barely _"—and so have you. Why aren't _you _a 'Boy-Who-Lived'? Why aren't _they _the 'Girls-Who-Lived'?" I find sadistic pleasure in seeing the redhead flush in embarrassment at my words. I turn to Harry. "Don't concern yourself with me. I don't plan to treat you any different, so don't think I'm your friend and devoted follower just because you spoke to me."

I leave them, or try to, in the hallway as I make my way back to my room. However, they grab my sleeve before I can walk further. "Why are you acting like this?"

It's Hermione. Her eyes are wide in confusion and hurt as she looks up at me, begging for answers. I only glare at her and jerk my arm out of her grasp. What's up with all the grabbing today? "Don't touch me." I say quietly, almost inaudibly, enough to get her to step back in fright.

I walk away without a second thought.

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When I come downstairs, the chatter quiets down reasonably. The teenagers aren't the only ones staring at me, now; the adults are doing it too. I don't notice until the room is entirely silent, though; I am too absorbed in a book from the library.

I look up to see people looking back at me. I raise an eyebrow. "It's rude to stare, y'know," I say—ironically—very rudely. I can see them flush and look away, back to their original positions. Good.

I feel a twist in my gut, and grimacing, I set the book down and reach for a cup of water. If only there is someone here to rearrange my vital organs like what happened to Teacher...but, in all honestly, I would take this twisty, coiling feeling any day over for the fact in exchange for the simple fact that _Al is alive. _He's _alive;_ he has to be; it has to work that way. He's fine. I know it.

Idly, I wonder what happened to my pocketwatch. I was wearing it before that final transmutation, and now it's gone, even though everything else came with me—blood, flesh and scars included.

I remember when I gave Al a pocketwatch...

I wonder what happened to him.

I miss him.

_Al is alive. _

Somehow, just knowing that, I don't feel that dull, aching pain in my chest anymore.

_._

_._

That night, I feel relief that I don't dream anymore.

Instead, I travel back again.

_The sky is dark, black, like an ink spill over a new page. There isn't a star in the sky, and the lights from nearby windows and doors shut off as the city of Central quiets and simply...stops. _

_Almost like everyone dropped dead. _

_There I remember, outside in the rain, the days when I was fourteen and Nina's death had shaken me to the core of my being. But now, watching the scene, I only feel numb. I see myself, on the steps of the Central HQ dorms, looking up at the sky. I see myself, and if I bend down I can touch my own face, like a solid mirror reflection. But I don't feel the rain on my skin. I don't feel that solidarity that comes with being alive. I see myself, and I see that I feel dead. And I don't reach out anymore; my fingertips stay, motionless, an inch from my own face in a dream._

_(No...it's a nightmare.)_

_There is no one to see me here. It is the dead of the night. _

_Behind the mirror me, there is a hulking suit of armor. Polished, refined, sharpened. The edges are clear and cutting; the metal looks like it can slice through steel and take a lot of damage. In contrast to its threatening exterior, there is an impossibly soft tone to those eyes...those eyes that look upon the younger Edward. _

_I run my eyes up and down the armor, relishing even the Alphonse condemned to iron. I was sabotaged of my possibility to see Al. I miss him...I miss him so much that it hurts. _

_"Brother, you have to come inside," he says (said?). I wish to hear that voice again, without that metallic ring to it. Without that emptiness. Mirror-me grunts, looking up at the sky, looking up as the tiny pats of rain start to fall harder. (I still cannot feel them.) Al stays back, sheltered by the overhang to the dorm entrance. _

_"I'll come in later." _

_There is a silence, so suffocating that it seems to stretch on endlessly. There are dark circles under mirror-me's eyes, and yet I cannot find it in myself to remember this particular incident. Did it happen? Am I imagining this? Why do I feel so empty? Why do I feel like I am a hollow shell? What is this pain inside my chest? _

_"Okay." the soft tone carries across the distance again, and then I hear clanking steps begin to retreat inside. I stare at the armor a moment longer, take in its large width, and I swear it turns. It turns, and it looks at me, straight at me... I can feel nothing but cold and emptiness even though I reach out a hand to touch it, try to bridge this impossible chasm. I want—need—to feel the metal under my fingers, to know that I am really looking at my little brother. Remembering him. _

_But he turns again, goes inside, and he does not look back. _

_Mirror-me finally breaks from his trance, taking out the cursed watch, silver and shining, gleaming in the dim light. His eyebrows furrow. "Odd, it's going slower for some reason..."_

_Odd indeed. _

_I know for a fact that my watch has never broken. Not once. Not ever. Not until that day, when it started ticking, ticking, ticking, and then it suddenly stopped as the world was engulfed in white and I lost sight of my precious little brother. _

_Not until the day I actually lost everything. _

_._

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_[Eleven hours.]_

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	7. s i x : Up the Blood Ridden Road

_- Laura -_

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**. c h a p t e r s i x .  
Up the Blood-Ridden Road**

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**REWIND.**

_Knowledge. What is it, really? Things shoved into our heads, things we're forced to remember. It may or may not be true. And who are we to know? We're just unimportant, powerless humans, after all. The one with true knowledge is above us; it transcends us; it laughs at our measly attempts to learn what it knew before time even began._

_The world._

_The universe._

_God._

_Truth._

_All._

_One._

_And you._

_Everyone says they want to learn; they want to gain more and more of the knowledge that the world has to offer. Well, I gained that knowledge when I was eleven. And I'd do anything to give it back now.  
_

**.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

**FAST FORWARD.**

I've only been at Hogwarts for a few hours, now, but I'm not sure I'm going to like it here.

These people—my _coworkers—_ they treat me as if I were a child. Yes, I'm a new teacher. Yes, I'm at least twenty years their junior. But that doesn't mean I don't know my subject. In fact, I probably know it better than they know theirs. I just have to prove that to them; I have to prove that magic is _nothing_, a useless _fantasy_, when compared to alchemy. Because alchemy, which has ruled my life since I was practically in diapers, couldn't possibly be proven useless, or obsolete, or _wrong _by something so childish as magic.

...Right?

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Three of the elderly women come up to me after the staff meeting. One I recognize from the "Order" meetings: Minerva McGonagall. The other two introduce themselves as Septima Vector, the Arithmancy teacher, and Bathsheba Babbling, who teaches Ancient Runes. Huh. So the two people on staff with whom I'll be working the closest are quite possibly as old as my own father. Fantastic. In the week I spent living in that decrepit house, I read up on those subjects, and while they seem to be vaguely based in alchemy, there will be a lot my students will have to learn before I'll even _think_ of letting them try a transmutation circle.

Vector and Babbling hand me copies of the textbooks used in their classes, tell me to ask them if I need any help, and hobble away.

Ha. As if I'd ever need any help teaching something I know like the back of my hand.

...But, as McGonagall leads me to my new classroom (which, apparently, also houses my office and living quarters), I realize that _no_, I _don't_ know how to teach. My memories of grade school in Resembool are hazy, and I doubt Teacher's methods would go over well with anybody in the _magical world_.

Huh. Oh well. I'll just make it up as I go along.

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McGonagall leaves me to myself at the classroom door, telling me the library is just a hallway away, and that someone will come up in the morning to show me the way to breakfast. I walk into the classroom, noting with approval how large it is. In fact, it's probably twice the size of the classroom we used in Resembool. And I have no doubt that with _magic_, the students will be able to move the desks easily, or make them disappear altogether, if I ever wanted a clear room.

There's a door in the back that I assume leads to my office; sure enough, there is a spacious room with a desk, chairs, and numerous bookshelves. Perusing the titles quickly, I see that most of them are on Arithmancy, Ancient Runes, and what this place considers "alchemy." It's more like "_create a Philosopher's Stone so we can live forever,_" as I discovered at the Order's Headquarters. There is no "alchemy for the people;" there are no normal transmutations; these people seem to focus on using alchemy solely for their own gain, and don't care who is hurt when they reach their goals.

It's _sickening._

As I walk through the door in the corner, which apparently leads to my personal quarters, my thoughts inevitably stray to Al. He would be so much better-suited to this job; he's the one with patience and the desire to both teach and learn. I've always thought that he would make an excellent teacher... But here I am, stuck with this job, which is apparently my only hope of getting home. I'm going to be a terrible teacher, I already know; the only thing I can think of doing with my students is telling them the information. If they don't understand it, they fail the course. I know, intellectually, that not everyone grasps things as easily as I do, but I don't know how to _help_ them understand it. Al, on the other hand, would probably have some clever way to help them through the concepts that are undoubtedly difficult for other people to grasp—

I stop dead on my self-guided tour, staring at the mirror hanging in the bathroom. Did it just show...?

But no, the image that stares back at me is decidedly _me_. Golden eyes, long blonde hair. And yet, when I glanced at it while entering the washroom, I could have sworn I saw dark golden eyes and shorter hair. For just that split second, it was _Al_ staring back at me in that mirror, staring at me with haunted eyes, asking why, _why_ I've failed him like I failed Mom...

_No!_ I was imagining things, I'm sure of it. Al is not here. If he were, I'd be the first to know. Having my little brother here would make the situation so much better; my guilt and worry would be assuaged; our only, primary goal would be to find out _where in the world _we are, and to figure out the quickest way home. But the eyes that stared at me from the mirror were not wide and loving; they were narrowed in hatred and disgust, demanding to know why I can't get things right, even when we thought our problems were over. Why I seem to live only to ruin his own life. Why, why, _why_—

I can't stand it anymore. Having that as my last memory of Al—angry, yes, spiteful, yes, but _alive_—is so much better than remembering him still and bloody and _dead_ in an alley back home. I have to comfort myself with that fact; I know Al is alive (he _has_ to be..._he just has to be_). Surely that is good enough? Even if Al hates me for everything I have ever done to him, at least he is alive to despise me in the first place. That should be good enough for me.

So why isn't it?

Apparently, I am selfish enough to want Al alive _and_ loving me. Frankly, he should have started hating me six years ago, when I screwed up his life beyond repair. But, inexplicably, he has stood by my side, saving my life countless times. Even when I have essentially ended his.

I guess I've just done it properly this time.

I storm out of the bathroom, away from the lying mirror, and lie down on the bed in my room, ignoring my roiling stomach. I _saw__ Al in the mirror._ It was fleeting, but I know I didn't imagine it. Maybe it was my head tricking me, because of my intense desire to see my brother alive and whole. Hell, maybe it was the Truth screwing with my head. But I can come to only one conclusion:

_Either way, I'm going insane._

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I spend most of the days leading up to the school year holed up in either my rooms or the library, trying to figure out how to dumb alchemy down enough so these kids will understand it. Apparently, only fourth years and up—and of them, only those who have taken at least a year of Arithmancy and Ancient Runes—are allowed to take the class, but that doesn't mean they'll understand it at all. I think they are very simple concepts—the foundation, "one is all; all is one," and the most basic law, Equivalent Exchange—but these little wizard _children_ probably won't get it.

(Never mind the fact that half of my students will be my age and older. I still have _years_ on them.)

When I do venture outside of my rooms—usually to explore the gigantic castle or to find whatever food my ravaged insides will allow me to eat—I am bombarded with questions from my fellow teachers. Most want to know how I've become a teacher at such a young age or what exactly alchemy is, because "I've heard of it but never in the sense that you use it," and would I mind if they sat in on one of my classes because they _really_ want to see what it's all about—

Hell, I might as well just hold a public demonstration and get it over with. Show everyone what I can really do with alchemy, maybe scare the students into quitting my class, until only those serious about learning remain. Or, even better, _everyone_ would quit the class. That'd be a nice alternative; I'd be able to devote all of my time to looking up maps (which I _still_ haven't done...) and figuring out how to get home.

...Actually, that isn't a bad idea. I'll have to run it by Dumbledore at some point.

As September first approaches, I hear the teachers discussing some sort of feast to welcome the students back to school. The pink-clad demon (...Imabitch? Something along those lines) seems especially excited about it. This, combined with the fact that I won't be able to eat any of the food anyway, convinces me that there is really no need to go to the feast. That's several hours that could be better spent reading. I simply ask one of the house elves (They're strange little creatures; I can't figure out what they could possibly be a cross between. They seem happy and intelligent enough, though, so I leave well enough alone.) to send me up a simple, easily digested meal for dinner, and settle down with yet another book for the night.

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My first class is bright and early the next morning, at nine-thirty. Apparently, each class meets either two or three times a week, and my first class consists of fifth years. Apparently I only have two classes a day, while many other teachers have five or six—really, it seems to border on ridiculous, but their schedules are none of my business. I'm not particularly happy about teaching a bunch of fifteen year olds the basics of alchemy (things I learned when I was _three_, thank you very much), and I definitely have more than a right to gripe about it.

I'm sitting behind my desk in the classroom by nine o'clock, forgoing breakfast in the Great Hall and instead asking a house elf to bring up some toast. "Slinky" was only too happy to oblige.

The kids trickle in slowly, starting at around nine-fifteen, staring at me as they take their seats. I notice with no small amount of confusion that they fill in the back seats first. Aren't they here to _learn_? And it's a hell of a lot easier to learn when you're close enough to the teacher and the board to actually _see what's going on._

I bite my tongue for the moment, though, and wait until the bell rings to stand up and properly examine my class. There are only a dozen or so students in total; I see that Hermione is among them, wearing "robes" trimmed with red. There is only one other with a red hood: a black boy who is seated next to her, watching me with interest. Several students in blue sit more toward the middle, and a handful in yellow are near them. And, finally, a small group in green sit in a corner, talking quietly to themselves and totally disregarding that I'm here at all.

I don't know too much about school, but I _do_ know that the students are supposed to pay attention to their teacher. And while the majority of the not-green people are...

"Why are you all back there?" I say loudly, deciding to start class off quickly. I lean back against my desk and look sternly around at my students. "If you want to learn, you're going to sit in the _front._"

There is a rustle of moving fabric as they stand up, grab bags, and move hesitantly toward the front. Hermione and her friend sit boldly in the front and center, flanked by several students in blue. The green ones sit as far back as they can manage, glaring at me mistrustfully. I decide immediately that I don't like them; their heads seem way too far up their asses. I doubt they'll understand even the most basic concepts of alchemy. I briefly consider kicking them out then and there, but...

"I'm Edward Elric, your Alchemy professor," I announce loudly, still surveying the class.

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_[Nine hours, forty-eight minutes.]_

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	8. s e v e n : Monster in the Mirror

_- Maya -_

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**. c h a p t e r s e v e n .  
Monster in the Mirror**

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I look upon the scene before me with the smallest of smirks on my face; it's getting more and more difficult to hide my amusement. Beside me sits a Ravenclaw boy, who is just now removing his robes. This one? Terry Boot. I'll surely think up a good nickname for him.

"Justin!" I call, my voice forcibly cold, "you take Herbology, then? Are you good at it?" I'm sifting through his books, and this subject in particular makes me pause for a moment. Perhaps it would help if I made it mandatory they all take the class.

The boy is totally out of breath, and pushing with all his might. He stops, leaning his hand against the wall to answer me, "Well, Professor, I—"

"Justin, you're terribly out of shape," I scold, interrupting him. "Listen to you, you can hardly talk. Take a deep breath and then keep going while you answer the question; I don't remember telling you you could stop."

..._Hold on..._

**STOP.**

**REWIND.**

**.**

**.**

**PLAY.**

"I'm Edward Elric, your Alchemy professor," I announce loudly, still surveying the class.

They merely stare back at me, their gazes expectant. I'm confused by this. Are they just idiots? Do they not understand the concept of a proper introduction? This is the part where they respond with their names, is it not? I can't very well teach a bunch of strangers. Especially if they're all dumbasses.

"Well? Do you have names or should I just call you whatever the fuck I want?" Despite the likelihood that they _did _all had names, there's a good chance I'll be doing the latter regardless.

They look oddly stunned, as if this is surprising to them. That I ask them their names. A startled gasp rises out of the collective and my eyebrows furrow above my narrowed eyes. What are they waiting for? Someone to come and do it for them? This is going to be harder than I thought.

"Do you have a problem?" I implore, doing my best to sound genuinely interested, "Or are you just _dumb?__ I __asked_ you all a question."

This seems to hurt the pride of at least one of the students. I almost sigh in relief; maybe they won't sit and stare and do nothing all class. (It crosses my mind that perhaps I simply don't have the amount of patience that this new role requires. I quickly shake off the thought. Patience, ha!) A boy with yellow-trimmed robes raises his hand, clearly attempting to hide the anger that's burned its way into his expression. His cheeks are red.

"With all due respect sir, I—" he starts...

...and I quickly interrupt him, "Yes! That's right, you!" My eyes roll so hard I fear they might burst from my head. "Professor is what you call me. I want to know what your name is!"

The boy sputters, a bit startled, and chokes over his answer. I glare in response (it has been said that my glare can curdle milk and make even the most freakishly tall person in the world shake in his own skin); this does nothing to help him gain control of his words.

"My name is Draco Malfoy," someone toward the back drawls. A blonde sits in green-trimmed robes, his icy blue eyes expectant and waiting, and his pale countenance set in a smug little grin. Despite the fact that he's shifty and I don't like the look of him, he's the first student to actually muster up a reasonable response to my exceedingly simple inquiry. Thus, he is, at present, my new favorite student.

"Well then," I clap my hands together, "twenty points to whoever the hell you green people are for being 'Draco Malfoy.' Congratulations." The reactions to this reward are so strong in contrast that I'm almost positive I've stumbled upon a sore spot among the not-green children. And that sore spot seems to be 'Draco Malfoy.' Huh.

"My name's Terry Boot!" a blue clad boy exclaims suddenly and loudly. It isn't long until the rest of the students are following suit.

My laugh carries out over the loud cacophony of voices mere moments later. They can't be serious? They've lost their chance! This isn't how the world works; I can't just go around giving them all rewards for introducing themselves! For goodness' sake!

"Are you crazy?" I finally call, quieting the classroom. "It doesn't work like that at all!" I snap a look over at a Hufflepuff boy who rolled his eyes. "And if you roll your eyes at me again, you won't ever _see_ again." The boy jumps, startled, and his expression instantly recoils back into something clearly defensive.

The venom in my voice leaks over the students, and they settle into that odd aura of surprise that they continue to adopt without a second's hesitation. I don't quite understand it, but I'm beginning to grow accustomed to it. Here, it is not expected of me to be rude and aggressive; my temper is not infamous; my foul mouth is not renowned throughout the land; there are no great and widespread rumors of the prideful, stubborn, angry Fullmetal Alchemist in this world of magic. I am a foreigner here, and I am anonymous in most respects. Here, I am only Edward Elric, the new alchemy teacher, something and someone that is clearly novel to these children, and not at all what they've expected.

But what _have _they been expecting? I sigh in frustration at the discovery that I may have applied my personality a bit too strongly for a first impression, and tear my left hand through my bangs with a jerky movement that speaks only in a language of exasperation. Are they not used to this amount of reproach in their studies? Could this not be the way that teachers act toward their students? It just doesn't make sense to me. Do they expect me to be nice? To be _polite? _That is an oxymoron at best: _teaching _and _kindness. _The two things simply do not fit together. If I am not accosting, if I am not condemning, if I treat them like a bunch of pussies who're about to throw themselves a pity party, then how are any of them supposed to ever learn anything? They aren't.

_But, _I think, _Alphonse would be nice. Wouldn't he?_

Yes. That's true. Al, he would be the best; he would not be volatile or vulgar; he would be respectful. He would be thoughtful. Hell, he probably would give out fucking _candy,_ and for all I know of teaching teenagers, that could be what I'm supposed to be doing! For a moment I consider just relinquishing my intimidation factor and asking a student how the hell I'm supposed to go about this, but I quickly dismiss that thought as ridiculous. Why would I even consider it? They'd just walk all over me if they heard something like that. _Punk-ass little bitches..._

I turn from them with a snarl and glare at the chalkboard that awaited my attention. The piece of chalk is already in my hand, rubbing in vain against the fabric of my gloves as I twist the material between my fingertips. Two long strides and I am before the board, my hand moving in steady motions across the surface. The chalk doesn't squeak once. I don't expect it to.

When I am finished, I turn to the students and sniff angrily, screwing up my mouth into something akin to a frown and what I hope is a look of vague disappointment.

**_EQUIVALENT EXCHANGE._**

"Equivalent exchange," I say, deciding that I should probably just jump right into things. If they can't grasp this, then this is hardly worth my time in any way. "Does anyone have an idea of what this could mean?"

Only murmurs and whispers arose from my audience, and I am just about to snap at them for mumbling when the same boy who attempted to defend himself from before raises his hand. Hermione does only seconds later.

"Hermione." I address her solidly, walking forward and kicking the leg of her desk. She jerks back in shock, and I glance down at the papers on her desk without trying to conceal my scrutiny in any way. "Answer the question."

"Equivalent exchange would be..." she pauses to let her thoughts form an accurate response, and I have a feeling that she hasn't ever really known how to answer the question. My best bet is she raised her hand the second she noticed someone else's went up before hers. She seems like she has to strive to be on top. There are two ways that drive can take her...and one of them is to an early grave. I hope she'll made good decisions in the future with her...gusto. "It would be... Getting something back that's worth the same as something you've given. Like when you trade chocolate frog cards, you always get one back."

My eyebrows raise in silent question at her example, and the mere concept of _chocolate frogs, _but with a shake of my head I determine it to be unimportant. "That was good," I say, "but you should know it goes beyond petty things like that. You." I nod my head toward the yellow-robed boy who always seems so eager to speak his mind, and he actually looks prepared to be called on this time.

"Justin Finch-Fletchley," he supplies, and I wonder why it was clearly so easy for them now, when it was so hard on them before, "sir, and I think that equivalent exchange would be getting what you paid for."

"Getting what you...?" I trail off. In some respects, it's a correct answer. I didn't want a completely different theory, though; I only wanted him to elaborate on Hermione's hypothesis...but this I can branch off of. I guess. "Yes, Flinchley, sort of," (there's a muttered, "it's Finch-Fletchely," that I promptly ignore), "but it's more of a trade. Like Hermione said, but you give up something of _exact _equal worth. For example, say... You wanted my desk."

He nods, a sign for me to go on, and I roll my eyes at him.

"Well? Say it!"

"What?" He fumbles with his quill in his sudden nervousness; he doesn't understand what I'm asking of him. It takes quite a bit of thinking on his part, but it isn't too long before he finds the answer somewhere in my heated glare. "I want your desk?"

"Good. You want my desk. Well, Flinchley, I want _your _desk in return. But, your desk isn't quite as big as mine is it?" I saunter my way toward him, and he visibly recoils from my advance, unsure of what to do. All he has to offer me is a small shake of his head in agreement.

"No, sir."

"Then you'll have to give something else up too, or maybe, I know!" I sing the words out happily before walking up to him and pushing him hard out of his seat. He falls to the floor and lands straight on his buttocks, his hands groping out for something to hold on to. He ended up almost pulling that Boot kid's pants right off of his waist as I set myself in his vacated chair. A whimper of pain escapes his lungs upon hitting the floor of the classroom, and many kids laugh when he lands. I immediately tell them to _shut the hell up._ "I don't have any way to get the desk to you, and since you want it, you might as well bring it over here."

"Bring it... Over here?" He repeated dubiously, rising slowly to his feet and rubbing at the sore spot on his behind, a puzzled frown adorning his face. "You want me to...?"

"Push the desk to this side of the room. I mean, if you could lift it and carry it, that would probably be even better, but for some reason," with this, I reach out a hand and grab hold of his bicep, squeezing and pulling a face, "I doubt you'll even be able to get it over here in _any _way. It might take a little while, so you might want to hurry up. We don't have all day."

A few laughs resound throughout the room, and I swivel rapidly in the chair, balancing backward and leaning against the desk as I haphazardly tossed my booted feet over the back of my new chair. "And the rest of you," I scowl, glowering in their general direction, and pulling my glance to the side to make sure it encompassed all the students in the room. I don't want to leave anyone out—"I hope you're wearing clothes under those, because you're all taking those ugly robe things off! I'm not having any sort of strange color wheel racism going on in my classroom. Anyone who wears robes to my class in the future will get detention and...lose fifty...house points." I falter as I try to remember the strange system they've developed here, as I hardly can find the time to care.

"Justin! What are you doing? Get over there and start pushing!"

**_._**

**_(...this is about where we were? Right?...)_**

**_._**

I look upon the scene before me with the smallest of smirks on my face; it's getting more and more difficult to hide my amusement. Beside me sits a Ravenclaw boy, who is just now removing his robes. This one? Terry Boot. I'll surely think up a good nickname for him.

"Justin!" I call, my voice forcibly cold, "you take Herbology, then? Are you good at it?" I'm sifting through his books, and this subject in particular makes me pause for a moment. Perhaps it would help if I made it mandatory they all take the class.

The boy is totally out of breath, and pushing with all his might. He stops, leaning his hand against the wall to answer me, "Well, Professor, I—"

"Justin, you're terribly out of shape," I scold, interrupting him. "Listen to you, you can hardly talk. Take a deep breath and then keep going while you answer the question; I don't remember telling you you could stop."

"You cannot gain anything without first giving up something of equal value in return," As Justin continues pushing, I stand up and make my way to my presently moving desk. I'm providing them with the mantra that has governed my entire life, the one I have so arduously and dutifully devoted myself to, and if they can't understand...well...

I keep my hard eyes on Justin the entire time, to make sure he does not stop, before picking up the papers that lay on top of the desk and beginning to pass them out. (If a few kids get papers thrown at their faces because they simply aren't close enough to me, well, that's hardly my fault. Maybe they should learn to fucking _catch_ things.) "This is the periodic table of elements. Study it; on a separate piece of paper I want you to list them alphabetically, in order of least to greatest by their atomic numbers, and by their densities."

"It doesn't say their densities on here." I can't tell if it's a Ravenclaw boy or a Slytherin boy who asks, now that their robes are messily discarded off to one side of the room.

"Good luck then." I smile pleasantly before turning and straightening the remaining papers out in my hands by use of my desk, which is a slightly easier walk from the student's desk at this point. My grin grows wicked.

"Justin! Keep pushing!"

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_[Nine hours, twenty-seven minutes.]_

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	9. e i g h t : Dark Reflection

_- Annie -_

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**. c h a p t e r e i g h t .  
Dark Reflection**

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**PLAY.**

I stomp toward the Great Hall with what I imagine is a deep, threatening scowl on my face, something that often made soldiers groan and plug their ears in the old days.

"_Master Elric, Sir, you mustn't lock yourself up all the time! Now come to lunch!" _I recall in a mocking tone, rolling my eyes after completing the sentence and continuing with the next line. "_No, Master Elric! You can't bring your book! It's 'bad manners' to read at the table!_" I raise my hands to air-quote 'bad manners' and huff. "When have I ever given a fuck about 'manners?' I hope he doesn't mind getting kicked across the Quidditch Pitch." My scowl becomes even more fierce as I purse my lips and walk through the massive doorway to stride briskly toward the High Table. I take the empty seat I'd left abandoned for my entire time here, thunking down harshly and scooting back against the chair's back. I glance around at the various foods and drinks before wrinkling my nose; I'm not even hungry, at all.

_One is all, and all is one._

_Brother, you have a living body that needs nourishment..._

I give a short sigh and snatch a roll, reluctantly biting into it.

The short silence I've caused breaks, and chatter bursts out again.

"Professor Elric, was it?"

I raise my head to glare at the source of the nauseating voice that has oh-so-kindly interrupted my plans of enjoying something I'd been forced to do, grimacing openly at what I find. A pink toad.

_Maybe it's a survival mechanism, _I muse.

She speaks in response to my silence as if I'm a ten year old—which she might actually think I am. Never over-estimate someone's intelligence.

"Do you speak English—?"

"What do you want, Lady?" I growl, cutting her off. She seems already offended by my rudeness (though, I could be much, _much _worse), but she presses on. "Dolores Umbridge—I don't believe we've met. I'm a Ministry official—" She stresses this—"here to take the post of Defense Against the Dark Arts."

I snort. _Not very subtle, are they? Might as well just say 'I'm some bitch from the government, here to fuck things over.'_ I reply after stuffing the rest of the roll in my mouth and snatching a carrot from my right—"I know exactly who you are. I just don't give a damn."

She doesn't seem to hear me. (Oh, dammit all—she's one of those people?)

"You've become quite the popular one, Mr. Elric."

"Have I?" I growl back. "Didn't notice."

She continues (_again_) as if I haven't spoken. "I've heard from my fifth years that you are teaching them a Muggle subject. Were you not hired to teach Alchemy?"

My temper immediately spikes. _Is she seriously going to try and tell me how to teach? _"Oh? I've heard from my sixth years that you're a bitch with a stick up your arse," I let my lips quirk into a smirk. "Really observant, aren't they?"

"What?" She shrieks over my last sentence. (_Oh God, my ears!_) "Who?"

I snort. "Whoever it was has just earned about sixty house points, I think." I hear the slap of a high-five and a few small '_Hell yeah!_'s as I say this, letting a full-blown grin take over my face. I continue, "Yep, you heard right. I'm using _normal, non-magical _methods to teach a _non-magical _subject. Alchemy is a _science_ and I'm going to teach it as such. Amazing, isn't it? Something that originated from science, a _non-magical, normal _subject can easily whoop magic's arse any day of the week." I scoff and shove something else in my mouth (I'm not even sure what it is, but it tastes okay) before standing. "And I could really give less of a shit whether you care or not. 'Government dog' or not." I stuff another roll in my mouth and swallow, glancing at her gaping expression—"You'll catch flies like that"—and briskly walk away after downing a cup of orange juice. I fight off the nausea as long as I can- about long enough to get out of the Great Hall.

_So much for that, Dobby._

.

.

"_Who's that short blond kid?"_

_"Huh? Oh, Luna Lovegood—you haven't hurt of her?"_

_"No, no. I've heard of Loony. The one in the red robes!"_

I purse my lips. _It's a coat, not robes. Morons._

_"Oh, that's Professor Ed Elric, teaches Alchemy. You know, didn't show up for the opening feast, yelled at Umbridge at lunch?"_

_"Oh! I remember that! It was hilarious! What's his class like? You're in it, aren't you? Got some points for bad-mouthing Umbridge and didn't hear about it 'til lunch—that was you, right?"_

_"Yeah, that was me. His class is really hard though. **Really** hard."_

I scoff. _If it's so hard, drop out. __Damn._

I stride through the library, weaving around tables and shooting straight for the librarian. I ask where to find a world map (because they can't even _organize a library _regularly) before setting off in the direction I am pointed.

_English. _Imabitch mentioned it this morning. It's definitely a language, but it's one I don't recognize the origin of. I caught on as soon as I got to this strange place, though. Some piece of information from the Truth I haven't unearthed until coming in contact with it—I assume—and the alphabets seemed the same or at least similar—so I have no trouble reading and writing. But it's making me curious. I've never heard of England or Scotland before. It's really making me wonder just how far away I am from home. Now, I'm starting to have my suspicions of whether or not 'home' is even _reachable_.

I bank into an aisle and glance around at the various atlases before snatching one at random and flipping to the index. I easily find "world map" and flip to the correct page.

I almost drop the book in sheer _shock. _

_"_It isn't even... how...?" I cock my head and tilt the map, angling it in different ways and searching thoroughly over countries I've never heard of. I examine the continents and countries and come up confused. "It doesn't look even vaguely _similar_!"

I chew my lip nervously and put the book back in its place before hunting through the library determinedly until I found _exactly _what I was looking for.

"Hermione!" I bark, poking my head around a bookcase.

Hermione shoots up from her textbook and parchment. Her friends both look up too, interested. "Professor Ed, sir!"

"Pop quiz! What year is it? Go!"

She answers immediately—"1995, sir!"

My eyes probably widen, my jaw falling slack slightly, but I nod. "Good, err... fifteen points to..." I eye the color of the robes. "Gryffindor." I dart away quickly, breaking into the corridors and heading in a set direction.

_I'm screwed._

.

.

I growl in frustration and point at the stone guardian angrily. "Move, or you'll _never move again!"_

No response...

"And by that, I mean you will be transmuted into _rubble_!"

No response. _Again._

"_Dammit, MOVE._" I command, forcing my palms together and giving the stone my _angriest _glare.

... _Nothing._

_"Uuugh!_"_  
_

"I don't think he appreciates being yelled at..."

I glare over my shoulder at the headmaster, growling. "You. I need to talk to you."

"You're rather demanding this morning, Mr. Elric. Are you well?"

I sharply point towards the gargoyle.

Albus nods and steps forward—"Ginger snaps"—before walking up his staircase.

I shake my head. _Senile old coot._

Albus takes his seat and folds his hands in front of him. "Now, how can I help you?"

"Dimensional traveling—what do you know."

He seems shocked by my straightforward interrogation—if not by the question. "Dimensional traveling? Why do you ask?"

I shift my weight. "That isn't important. Answer the question."

He raises an eyebrow. "It's important enough to come threatening my gargoyle."

I purse my lips. "Answer the question."

"Urgent, is it?"

"Answer. The. Quest—"

He holds up his hands, smiling a bit. "Okay, all right. I don't know anything, actually. I'm not even sure if dimensional travel is _possible _through magic; this is the first mention of it I've heard. Why do you ask?"

I chew on my lip slightly, furrowing my eyebrows. _If even **magic** can't do this...how am I supposed to get home to Al? _"Are you _sure_?"

"Quite. Sorry, my boy," He replies.

I sigh and nod back. "Thanks, anyway."

.

.

"Well, today's been absolutely _lovely," _I grumble sarcastically, wiping my wrist across my mouth. "Met the bitchiest teacher ever (never coming to any meal _ever again_) who also happens to be a government dog. (I've had enough conspiracies, thank you.) I've puked _at least _four times today. And I find out I'm barely even in the same _century_ as I was last year!" I huff and jerk the handle on the sink to wash down the concoction of mostly blood that lay in the basin before unbuttoning my shirt and turning off the water. I carefully avoid looking at the mirror as I turn on the shower and shed my clothes.

"This much stress on one guy is just _ridiculous."_

.

.

"Professor Ed?"

I rise from my head-to-desk position. "What?"

She blinks. "Err... I just wanted to ask if you were all right and to inform you that class has been over for a little over ten minutes now—and you fell asleep somewhere around giving up on forcing the class to recite the periodic table."

I narrow my eyes. "I still don't get how you guys haven't gotten it yet. It took _me _a week to get that—and I was _four_!"

She shrugs. "So...are you okay? Mrs. Weasley's worried about how you're getting along lately. You know...with the blood."

I put my head back down. "You can tell her I'm doing absolutely _dandy._"

She sighs, and I hear the distinct _thunk_ of her bag hitting the ground and a chair being pulled across the floor. "How's it been lately? It can't be that you're eating too much all at once. You haven't been coming to the dining hall at all, and you've _insisted _that no house elves try to clean your room."

"What are you, my mother?" I grumble.

"...You have drool on your desk."

"Thank you for pointing that out."

"Ed..." she growls.

"I've been throwing up a lot more, lately. To be honest. I'm kind of stressed out."

"About what—?"

"That's none of your concern, Miss Granger."

"I'm just worried, Professor. Throwing up blood isn't normal—in fact, it comes with most _fatal _diseases."

"I've been in fatal situations and lived before. I'll take my chances."

"Ed!"

I chuckle. "Don't worry about it. I'll be fine. Class ended ten minutes—"

"Fifteen, actually."

"—ago. Don't you have another class to go to?"

"This is the class before lunch. I have...an hour and forty-five minutes left."

"And you also have an assignment in my class~ You should probably go do that—or eat."

"But—"

"Shoo."

.

.

.

.

_[Six hours, ten minutes.]_

.

.

.

.


	10. n i n e : To Toast Empty Promises

_- Summer -_

_._

_._

**. c h a p t e r n i n e .  
To Toast Empty Promises**

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.

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**REWIND.**

Most people can't remember their childhood. I can remember mine with such startling clarity that it frightens me.

That is, however, only sometimes. Sometimes, the past is so blurry I can't make up the basic shapes. Sometimes, the colors bleed together and the voices become warbled. Sometimes, I can imagine blank canvases, and I'd wonder what would fill those stretches of no memory. But I don't know, and I don't think I ever will.

I can remember laughter. Warmth. The sun on my arms and face and skin. And I remember the water splashing into my eyes. And I remember running into other kids and hiding behind trees and happiness.

It's so cold here.

It's so bitter—there's no sweetness that I crave. The more I'm away from it, the more I want it. I want home. I want Al. I want Winry. I miss them so much.

I can remember ice. I can remember blood. I can remember screams.

And I really wish I don't.

**.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

**FAST FORWARD. **

The day is warm and sunny, bright with little birds fluttering around the treetops. The leaves are different, pungent colors of red and gold and purple, falling one by one and two by two and littering the ground. Autumn has finally knocked on the door of London; London has invited it in for tea; and apparently they had a pretty damn good time.

I sort of wish that the sky would turn black, that the trees would burn and the school would fall, just like how I did on this day, years ago.

I've canceled classes for today, instead wandering aimlessly around the corridors, looking for a way I could meet with old man Dumbledore. I feel a strange sense of deja vu; I'm meeting him to...to...figure out about...crossing dimensions?

No. I did this. I did this already.

My memory is so screwed up; I can't think properly. At least I have no automail that could hurt my ports, which brings me to another question: why? Why had _it_ done all this for me?

"Professor Ed?" I turn around to see Hermione, looking faintly worried with papers in her hands. "I'm sorry Professor, I just wanted to know why we won't be having class today..."

I stay silent for a moment. Then, deciding on the best answer, I say, "It's Professor _Elric_ to you, Miss Granger. And the latter is none of your business." She looks taken aback and abashed at the same time, blushing furiously. Turning around, I allow myself to let my feet take me to my destination, which, apparently, is my room.

Feeling slightly dizzy, I bring a hand to my face and press to get rid of the slight pain. It doesn't go away.

Perhaps I need some sleep.

.

.

_Tense atmosphere. I remember this place. That was all I seemed to be doing nowadays—remembering. _

_Crumbling walls and rocks of leftover debris, the wooden planks and pipes the only thing holding up the last of the roof. There's a small hole that broke through to the surface, light dawning on its stone floors. And, on that floor, I see a very familiar figure._

_Me, with a pipe stuck through my abdomen, blood pulsating out of the wound like a heartbeat. The dream is so fuzzy; nothing is right. It's like someone is showing a video to me, and it isn't really mine. _

_Then, the scene shifts, changes, from black to white in an instant. The sky overhead is blue; the ground is covered in white. I find my feet on the snow, yet I make no footprints. Well, what did I expect? Of course there won't be footprints. I'm in a dream—a memory, maybe. But I can't stop the feeling of disappointment running through me. What was I expecting? To be real? I already am real. I have a body that I can move in, plus two more limbs. _

_"Alphonse!" _

_Hearing that name causes my head to snap up, looking at the scene in front of me. _

_The first thing I see is armor: Al's old armor, on the ground face first. And next to him is Winry, pretty Winry, her eyes wide with fear. Then Mei, who's looking more panicked than ever. Seeing them, it causes a twinge of uncomfortable pain in my chest; I still don't know where Al is. _

_Behind them, back and blending in the scenery—Scar and Marcoh, with their companions along. _

_They're calling 'Alphonse' over and over again, telling him to wake up. I want to do the same, but I am stuck, standing still on my spot on the ground. Suddenly, Winry stops calling Al and shuts her eyes tight as a tear fell. "...Ed...ED!" _

_I want to reach out to her, but suddenly she opens her eyes, as if she's just chanted a mantra and suddenly I'll be there. I want to say, _"I'm here! Look at me!"_ but I know I am not. This is...isn't my memory. It's someone else's. Alphonse never told me about this. _

_For a second, a split second, I see Winry lower her eyes to mine. And I almost believe that she is looking right at me. She opens her mouth again, lip trembling. "Al..." she whispers, looking tormented—looking at me. Taunting me. It's as if she's asking, 'Why? Why didn't you save him? Why didn't you come? Why did you make me cry?' Why am I always screwing up everything? Those eyes almost kill me.  
_

_And for once, I wouldn't mind if they did. _

.

.

My nightmares—they can't be called dreams, not possibly—get worse as the day progresses. I can't do much but lag around and sleep, and my head hurts when I _was_ conscious.

By the time I let my groggy self stay up, it's eight, and the students' curfew is an hour away. I don't want to stay in this castle; I don't want the absolute _wrongness_ of its logic and physics to affect me any more than it already has.

I make my way out of Hogwarts and into the little town at the foot of the school—Hogsmeade, they've called it. And idly, I wonder—why is it all named after pigs? Surely, they can think of a better, more original name. But apparently not.

I've been to Hogsmeade only once, and it was only for an errand that I accompanied Professor McGonagall on. I let my feet carry me to the nearest place I can find: a brightly lit pub labeled 'The Three Broomsticks.' It's an odd name for a pub...but I've learned that for all wizards, everything is simply _odd _for them.

Deciding to take a drink, I allow myself to go in. Inside, it's littered with people and actually pretty big, leading me to think that most everyone in town goes here. I might be wrong. It could be that its looks fooled people and this was the best place around—after all, I_ am _often wrong. Always wrong.

I sit down at a bar seat and lean against the table heavily, the late-night music pounding heavily into my head. A curvy woman with red hair turns from another patron, raising an eyebrow at me expectantly.

"Half-whiskey," I mumble.

"Only got fire-whiskey, hon."

I sigh. What the hell is firewhiskey? Whatever—as long as it's strong. "Half of firewhiskey, then."

As she goes off to retrieve said drink, I feel someone slide in on the stool next to me. Now, usually, it isn't odd for someone to have a drink next to you; but this man is rather prim looking and properly dressed. As in, robes that seemed of the finest quality and neatly-combed white-blonde hair. He has a familiarly sharp, angular face, and from my side vision, I can see he has pale eyes.

The bartender returns with my drink: a dark, ruby-gold colored liquid. I put it to my nose before my lips, and when I take a whiff, it seems tangy and burning, making my stomach quease and turn. Thinking twice, I put it down and push it away, sighing. Even with my arm back, my insides are still screwed, and this seems like a bad idea.

"Bad day?" the man murmurs, looking at the firewhiskey.

"You have no idea," I mumble.

He turns to me fully, and I can see that his eyes are slate gray—a shade I find familiar. "Say, are you a Malfoy?"

He looks faintly stunned for a second; that gives me all the answer I need. However, he raises an eyebrow—"Who's asking?"

I snort. "Your son's Professor."

Malfoy sobers, apparently understanding that this round is his loss. By the way the man is sitting—erect, stiff—I quickly come to a conclusion. It's not an uncommon fact that the Malfoys are a Dark family, and this must be the head—Lucius Malfoy himself. Guess those books in the Hereditary section paid off after all. He must be here for some purpose, with the way he's presenting himself: totally artificial. I can tell. He is an amateur at lying.

"He's not very good, by the way," I say while tilting my glass and watching the liquid spin. "In my class. Both behavior-wise and academic-wise." I see Malfoy cock a brow. Bastard. I feel like squeezing his neck until he dies—his facial expression is so much like Mustang's. "I would've expected something better from _your _family," I smirk. I don't really mean it, but I enjoy the way a muscle in his jaw jumps and how he gets agitated. I could never expect something better from their family. "But I guess it's not going so good, is it now?"

"I'll have a word with Draco about that," he waves off.

I humph. "I'm sure you will."

I say it as an accusation, but it comes off as detached. Oh well.

To Malfoy, I must look drunk, with a half-glass of whiskey and red-rimmed eyes and a sullen face, because that is how I know I look. And he thinks it might be easier. I've done this before; go to a man at his weakest, garbled moment and extract information. It's the military's oldest trick, and evidently, it's Voldiewhore's too.

Too bad I'm not drunk.

Maybe I should be.

My head is pounding against my skull, and I want to raise a finger to rub my temple, but I can't. I feel slow and sluggish, like I've been drugged, but I know I haven't. Maybe it's just the atmosphere. Maybe it's just me. But I feel like ripping my hair out. There's the faces of people I know too well behind my eyes and I can't make them stop.

_Mom._

_Dad.  
_

"You know my name, but I don't know yours, mister..." he trails off.

I glance at him suspiciously, but answer—"Ed. Just call me Ed." Better to give off that much than nothing at all.

Or is it? I have no clue. My head still hurts.

_Mustang. _

_Hawkeye.  
_

I have a sick feeling in my gut. Or maybe it's my stomach. "Ah, it's a good think I've caught up with you...Professor Ed." he says, and his upper lip curls. There's this coil of heat inside my chest. "I just wished to know if you are teaching properly—discipline, and all that. The Ministry is very thorough in its inspection of Hogwarts teachers. You are responsible for illuminating the minds of this generation, after all."

...

Is he calling me _incapable?_

_Izumi. _

_Sig._

_Armstrong.  
_

"I don't know that it's your job to tell me how to work, _Malfoy,_" I snarl. He looks taken aback. "But I can tell you that what I teach is what I teach: _alchemy._ And I don't see you as a person telling me what to do, especially on a subject that is my forte. So, if you don't mind, fuck off."

He blinks at my rudeness. Then, looking briefly irritated, he starts again, looking more polite and abashed, that faker—"No, no. I didn't mean to offend you like that. Only to say if you had enough teaching degree to ensure the quality of the classes which are being given—"

"—Like your oh-so-praised _Undersecretary?_" He's at a loss, and I feel my ire rising up. Does he realize yet that I'm not drunk? Does he realize that it's not a good idea to mess with something that's none of his business? Why is the _wizarding world _so damn nosy? "Please. She can't even teach. And ask anyone else in that school of their unbiased view; they'll tell the same."

_Havoc._

_Breda._

_Hughes._

I slam my glass down as the sickening feeling in my gut clenches and twists. Darkened into hate, it begins to take form: the deep-set, dangerous foreboding that has haunted me since Mom died. I can feel it swirling up into my mouth. And I need to get out of here.

"Now, if you've got no more idiotic questions and insulting accusations for me, I'll be taking my leave," I say stiffly. I leave the untouched firewhiskey there for him to pay for. And when I reach the cold, night air, I promptly double over and throw up.

Blood again.

_Gracia._

_Elysia.  
_

I wipe the last of the substance from my mouth and inspect it on my fingers, telling myself it's _okay_ because it means that _Al is alive _and I shouldn't be thinking anything different. If this is what I have to pay, than I am fine with it—more than fine—ecstatic—almost to the point that whenever I think about it I feel like throwing up again.

I look up and stumble back at the sight before my eyes; a sudden ghostly scene, a figure, white and white and white and blue skies and a pretty face I know so well. There is blonde hair and blue eyes that stare at me, full of tears, and there is a fallen suit of armor and a broken voice aimed straight at me—_"Al..." _

My voice gets caught in my throat.

_Winry._

The vision disappears. I feel like dying.

I never want to see Lucius Malfoy again.

As I walk back to the castle, I can hear the far-off chime of the clock tower, saying it's twelve midnight and the day of October third has finally ended.

.

.

.

.

_[Five hours, fifty-one minutes.]_

_._

_._

_._

_._


	11. t e n : To Fight 'Til Our Death

_- Laura -_

_._

_._

**. c h a p t e r t e n .  
To Fight 'Til Our Death**

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**STOP.**

_And then it all went to hell._

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**PLAY.**

"Professor Ed?"

Hermione, standing in front of my desk, snaps me out of the doze I slipped into sometime in the middle of class. I lift my head from my arms, rather irritated. "Yes, Hermione?"

She glares down at me with a rather fierce expression (well, it would be fierce, except I grew up with _Winry_), and lets her bag drop heavily to the ground. "That's the third time in two weeks you've fallen asleep during the practical lesson, and everyone's worried about you. And they don't even know about your blood problem! There's—"

"I'm _fine_," I grumble, going to stack some papers with notes of my plan to get home. The small size of the pile is rather depressing. "I'm just stressed. I haven't ever taught before. Hell, I've barely even gone to school! And being sick doesn't help."

"But that's not all of it, is it?"

I sigh and send one of my best glares at her; she flinches but doesn't look away. I turn again to my parchment and the charts of runes that could possibly be useful. None of them work well enough in conjunction with the geometry of the lines; it's sad, really. I've been here a month and a half, and have made almost no progress on how to get home. "What's that?" Hermione asks curiously, craning her neck to look at the parchment.

"Just a personal project," I answer shortly, snatching the parchment away before she can look properly. "It's far beyond what I've taught you."

"It looked like you were having trouble," she says, still trying to catch a glimpse. "You don't know much about magic, right? There are some exclusively magical runes that Professor Babbling's talked about...maybe I could help you with those...?" She trails off hopefully, staring at me with big eyes.

"Really? Would you mind helping now, over lunch?" I perk up instantly, forgetting my previous reservations about talking to the girl. If she knows enough of those...the premise of magic—bypassing equivalency—is exactly what I need to get out of this God-forsaken place. I sit up a bit straighter in my chair, absentmindedly pulling my hair out of its tie. My nap has ruined it; I can feel loose strands everywhere. I quickly set about plaiting it again. Hermione glances up at me after pulling out parchment and quill, her expression transforming into one of utter confusion.

"Uh...Professor, what are you doing?"

I stare at her; isn't it obvious? "Re-braiding my hair...?"

"But—o...kay," she says, slowly, still looking totally bewildered, but then she shakes her head and continues, "What's the circle designed to do, exactly? I probably can't help with any of the angles or such..._those_ look very complicated to me, and they're not even done, are they?" She gestures to my reject pile of arrays.

I tie off the braid, shaking my head. "Those won't work. But maybe with magical runes..." I trail off, trying to figure out how to tell her what I need without actually telling her what I'm doing. "Anything about traveling or transport? A Gate or portal? The Truth? ...Divine intervention?" I say the last with some disgust, but Truth considers itself God, doesn't it?

She thinks for a moment, and then draws several runes on a spare bit of parchment, pointing to the first one. "This is Mannaz—it represents mankind and his important relationship to the divine structure. More specifically, in relation to magic, it's how magic seems to almost transcend God."

I nod, staring down at it. _Transcending God..._yes, that would work nicely. And I've never seen that rune in my _life_! "And if you inverse it?"

Shrugging, she replies, "Just the exact opposite. Mankind has no true importance to God. It's a bit of an existential idea, really...man is alone and powerless in the grand scheme of things." I nod my understanding, and she points to another. "This one's Dagaz. It usually represents new dawn breaking, but it can also symbolize the start of a new journey...now that I think about it, this one, Raidho, is also very prominent in travel...there are tons of these, Professor!"

I let my face split into a feral grin. "Well, would you mind helping me out more often?"

Maybe these _wizards_ were useful, after all...

_**.**_

_**.**_

_**(What is this terrible sense of foreboding?)**_

_**.**_

_**.**_

"_Professor_, are you going to Hogsmeade this weekend?" Draco Malfoy drawls from his seat in the back row of students. Many of his fellows turn to him in surprise; it is not often that the pompous bastard—one bad enough to rival even _Mustang_—speaks up in class. And on such an unrelated topic!

"No," I say shortly, glaring at him in hopes that he'll shut up. "There's work I have to do. It's just a waste of time."

"Hogsmeade is fun!" Ernie Macmillan, a loud (but admittedly bright) student, says from the front. He looks up at me with wide, incredulous eyes. "There's tons of stuff to do, especially if you've never been there!"

"They have a bookstore," Blaise Zabini says from next to Malfoy, a slight smirk forming on his lips. Apparently, he and Malfoy find some secret between them incredibly amusing. "You like that stuff, right, _Professor_?"

_He's got me there._ "I'll think about it," I say shortly, effectively ending the conversation and turning back to the board. "The elements of the most basic transmutation circle..."

**_._**

**_._**

**_(It still hasn't gone away...oh God, what's Truth planning now?)_**

**_._**

**_._**

After a bit of coaxing from Hermione during our next few runes lessons, I finally agree to go along to Hogsmeade this coming weekend. She quickly made me realize that magical runes very well could be my key to getting home. I plan to spend most of the day in the Hogsmeade bookstore; there's a very good chance that they have useful books there. Hermione also told me that the Three Broomsticks has some sort of non-alcoholic drink called "Butterbeer" that's very popular; I make a mental note to stop by later and see if my stomach can take it.

I walk down the street toward the bookstore Hermione mentioned, looking around at all the sights. It really is an intriguing place, if nothing else. The students are milling around out of uniform (which is an odd sight in and of itself); the stores all have brightly colored fronts that advertise their wares; everything is lively and happy.

_If only I could actually fit in here._

I see Hermione step into a seedy-looking bar near the end of the street, followed by several other students. I recognize a few from my classes, but have no idea what they're all doing there. I push it out of my mind, though, as I finally arrive at the bookstore. Just as Hermione promised, it's large, brightly lit, and well-organized.

Draco Malfoy slips out the door not long after I enter. It's odd, as he doesn't exactly strike me as the bookish type, but I push that out of my mind once I reach the Runes section, near the back. It's _enormous_! Picking a promising-looking Index of Ancient Magical Runes, I eagerly sit down to read.

I never get past the first chapter.

Back home, it was well-known among the military that when Al and I read, we block out the rest of the world. The only things that matter to us, at that moment, are the words printed on the page. People talking, dogs barking, doors slamming open and shut—we don't notice them at all.

But then again, we've never been interrupted by explosions and screams.

My head snaps up, searching immediately for the source of the attack. It's not far off at all; in fact, it looks like the front of the bookstore has been blasted in. People in the store are screaming; people on the street are running; a group of people dressed in black are shooting various colored lights at people.

"Kid, get out of here! They're Death Eaters!" the store owner shouts at me as he runs toward a back door himself. Correcting his assessment of my position seems unnecessary at the moment; nevertheless, I scowl deeply and prepare to head straight for the group in black. What did he call them? Death Eaters? As far as I can tell, they seem to be out to kill people for no apparent reason, and their name certainly doesn't sound very nice.

I clap my hands and automatically prepare to transmute my right arm, but then I remember that there is no metal to transmute. _Well, this is inconvenient_...I cast around for metal to turn into some sort of knife before joining the battle...it's decidedly unwise to enter a heated conflict unarmed. Especially one against people armed with _magic_.

The chair legs, as far as I can tell, are made of some strange sort of iron. Not the strongest thing around, but it'll do in a pinch. I test the weight of my new knife, switching it between hands quickly, before dashing off toward the center of the battle.

The Death Eaters have already done quite a bit of damage. Several people are bleeding on the ground; some are definitely dead. These 'Death Eater' people are _threatening my students_. I don't know much about being a teacher, but I _do_ know that we are supposed to protect our students at all costs. I dive into a bundle of black-hooded men, quickly incapacitating them through non-fatal knife slashes and kicks to the head. I see several students—Ernie Macmillan among them—nod at me gratefully before running off to another group of Death Eaters.

_What are they doing? They need to get out of here!_

There is no time to send them back to Hogwarts, though, before I'm engaged by another knot of Death Eaters. Out of nowhere, Hermione and the other teenagers I met over the summer come to try and help me_. _I don't have a free limb with which to shove them away, but I yell, "_Get away! _Go back to the castle! You'll all be killed!"

It's hard to tell between the yells, crashes, and screams all around, but I'm fairly certain I hear six pairs of footsteps retreating. I return all of my attention to the group of Death Eaters that are trying to attack me. None of them, individually, are terribly strong, but when they get into groups and attack all at once...

I dodge a jet of green light without much thought. I've learned quickly, early on in the battle, that the best strategy is to avoid the enemy's shots at all costs. There's one—I can't remember the color—that kills you instantly; one tortures you; there are a few particularly nasty ones that disembowel you or slice you clean open—

"_Idiot!_ We're supposed to capture him! Not kill him!"

Interesting...these Death Eaters want to _kidnap_ me? Why? I haven't done anything to them...unless Malfoy is one of them. That would make a lot of sense, actually.

Whoops.

I quickly defeat my four remaining opponents and spin in a quick circle, looking for more enemies. The battle seems to be winding down; the Death Eaters disappear into thin air...then something red on the ground catches my eye. I'm sure why; after all, it isn't an altogether uncommon color on the battlefield. But something about this...it is far brighter than any blood I've ever seen...

I turn to look closer, and for a moment, I forget how to breathe. Dull brown eyes stare up at the sky, frighteningly blank and cold. I was so sure, _so sure,_ that they left! I _distinctly_ heard six pairs of footsteps leaving me, leaving the battlefield, leaving danger. So how—?

I fall to my knees, overcome by a sudden sense of nausea. Some of it is my overtaxed body's response to the fighting. Most of it is not.

Maybe I imagined hearing them leave. Maybe they've been here all along, ignoring my warning, acting _so much_ like me when there is no need. Not when innocent young lives are on the line. There's no reason for it, none at all. This death is nonsensical. Surely she hasn't actually—?

_Yes._ That _has _to be it. If I could have hallucinated them leaving, then it's just as possible that I'm hallucinating this dead body lying on the ground. I'm going mad, I know that well, so of _course_ she's fine. My mind is trying to trick me; Truth is playing its cruel game; and _surely_ this girl isn't actually _dead_, because that makes absolutely no sense _at all_—

"—Where are—" Harry Potter's worried voice cuts sharply into my thoughts. I welcome it, welcome the reprieve from the madness that is my own mind, because now the _real_ her will show up with the others, because she is _fine_—

But the boy cuts himself off with a strangled gasp, and I know that he is seeing exactly the same thing as me. Still, I look up at the group of five (_there should be six of them, where's the last, why isn't she there_?), pleading, _begging_ them to tell me that no, everything's okay, they've convinced her to go back to the castle because it's dangerous, and she is only _fourteen_, and the battlefield is no place for a fourth year—

But then Ron gives something akin to a sob, dropping to his knees with an anguished expression, and I know this is real.

"_GINNY!"_

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_[Four hours, thirteen minutes.]  
_

_._

_._

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	12. e l e v e n : Over and Over

_- Maya -_

_._

_._

**. c h a p t e r e l e v e n .  
Over and Over**

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**STOP.**

This time, we're only going back a little.

Regret, I'd say, is a form of sorrow—a monster birthed from guilt, from irony, from death. I have always regretted.

I've regretted so intensely that I had believed, once, that if I screwed my eyes tight, if I closed away the world with all my might and pushed as hard as I could, and just _wished_, that I could bring back anything that was lost. That all those things that are unattainable, those promised delicacies that my life was graced with as a child, that I could reach those with sheer will. I _wanted _so badly that I would have given anything. I would have given everything.

When I opened my eyes, everything was still in flames. Ashes danced before me and the world shook, a great tremor rippling up through its fragile skeleton and rupturing the carefully crafted bones of existence. When I opened my eyes, all I saw was grey and red; there was no white and there was no black and there was no soft or careful or love. When I opened my eyes, I saw the truth.

That I would have to give everything if I wanted anything. And I couldn't just close my eyes and wait anymore; I had to dive forward into this ocean of monotones and scarlet reds while the high tide rose to colossal new peaks and I struggled to breathe. Straining and flailing and pushing would only move me inches further, yet I had to keep on, had to keep forward. It was the one thing that was important to me in this world.

Right now, these feelings—this nympholepsy of determined rage, this endless fervor and passionate devotion, this unending sacrificial need—they feel alien to me. I am confused. They are not new, yet my brain is flooded with a conundrum of opposition. They feel like some other person's wants, some outside being's undying fidelity. Then came the wash of guilt that poured over me like acid, and this too felt unfamiliar in the oddest of ways. Why did it hurt so much? I couldn't remember a time when the pain of my regret was so great, yet I knew it had been—I knew it in the depths of my mind and the reflections of my memories. Still, they screamed at me that this is different. This isn't what I think it is.

_Something is wrong. _

Again, we hiss, flitting through the dark; again, we say:

_What is this terrible sense of foreboding? _

See, though, now we go back. We're only going back a little. (Regret, I'd say, is a form of sorrow...)

**.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

**REWIND.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

**PLAY.**

Picture this: there are six children, and then there are five. The problem with this is simple.

**_._**

**_(There should be six of them, where's the last, why isn't she there?)_**

**_._**

This is familiar.

The catch of his lips, the trembling hands, the widened eyes, vacant, despairing—he howls her name to the heavens and both syllables echo without hindrance.

Yes, this is very familiar.

Desperation is gripping at him now, pulling from him the last shreds of hope and leaving them barren on the ground. I feel as if this is the part where he vomits and out spill all the words he wished he'd said but never had. The letters will crawl around like ants in a line, working together to form nonsense and wrap around the palms of his hands where the soft flesh meets the earth. His lungs will crumple up inside of him; his brain will burn like fire; his stomach will rot and mold and dissolve, and he will be in pieces. His face is filled with horror, with discovery, with terrible, tremendous sadness that grabs hold of him like a vice and _tightens, _and, _oh God, _it's so familiar that I can feel it in my very soul.

_"GINNY!"_

His voice rips through the air like shrapnel and plunges into everyone it passes. The silence pauses; the silence cries; the silence sings, and then the silence has ended.

Eventually we all have to remember that there is a battle around us.

This feels like war.

(This feels familiar. This feels like reaching out a hand that's unsteady and desperate, like a scream that yearns for a sibling, for a brother, for a mother, for family. For _wanting_ and _losing_ and _never receiving, _and _oh __no we've lost everything.)_

There are five children where there should be six, and they are all looking at the same thing. Ron is a mass of quaking misery and has already wrenched the only sounds that could possibly accompany this scene from his own vocal chords, so the others say nothing. They stand one step behind the kneeling boy, fixed and rigid in the silence - _loud, loud, loud, loud, loud, loud, loud, it's loud - _then they break one at a time. In increments of the smallest unit they follow the youngest brother's example, and there are brothers surrounding her now (she is the sixth child, not where she's supposed to be, _why isn't she there?), _three of them, and they all bend at the seams in their anguish. There is a young woman dead. A child. A little girl...

...and it's my fault.

_I couldn't even save one little girl. _

It hurts even more the second time.

It's my fault. Because...

...I'd moved out of the way. _That should have been me. That should have been me! _I want to scream; I want to rip someone apart; I want Ron to fly from the ground and stab a dagger into my heart because this is horrifying and terrible and _all my fault _and _that should have been me! _I want to break every bone in every Death Eater's body. I want to lay on the ground by Ginny's side and have her rise from her stillness, reach out her hands and steal my breath. I want to give her back her life. I don't want to have to be the one who has taken it from her.

I wrench my eyes away from her unmoving form (she is so still that it frightens me. I can't watch her like this—I can't see her like this—_I can't) _and meet a pair of roving green eyes. Harry Potter meets my gaze, and it bores into me for a whole, long moment. I do not look away. I wait for accusation; I wait for reproach; I _crave _it. _Blame me! _I want to shake him, slap him, scream in his face, _It should have been me! _Yet I cannot read what he sees. I cannot know.

I burst forth then, an animal set on revenge, searching for prey with an inferno of rage flaring in its eyes. Whipping around wildly, I scan the area for any remaining Death Eaters. I'll fucking kill them. I'll drown them in their own fluids and tear their tongues from their mouths—I'll...

(This anger presses somewhere deep inside of me, and I feel a protest rising to the forefront of my mind. _This isn't you. This isn't you. _It is wrong, still; it is petrifying. It was, it it, it will be...)

...I'll drag them to hell and... and...

...they are all gone.

Every one of them.

With nothing left to direct my anger toward, I feel an enormous wave of exhaustion wrap around me. My body screams and my muscles cry and my heart clenches in manic, acute dysphoria. A recognizable sensation of vertigo and gut-wrenching nausea floods over me and I choke in response, my breath stopping somewhere on its way up my trachea and fleeing back to the realm of my diaphragm. When I fall, I hit the ground hard, and I can taste the iron in my mouth before I can even comprehend what the metallic tang means. It flows down my chin, spreading across the ground and edging slowly into my vision. And I think chastely about how much of a fuck-up I am—_I couldn't even protect a little girl. That should have been me. Why isn't she there?—_before the world fades away.

**.**

**.**

**_(This feels like war.)_**

**.**

**.**

_Ever had that feeling? That feeling that something is going to go _(terribly, hideously, irrevocably) _wrong. _

Then something goes wrong. But...

_But the feeling doesn't go away. And when you awaken from your unwitting slumber of despair, it hits you at a new high. Dread is rising up in your throat; you are calling out for hope because it has abandoned you. You feel as if the world will shatter, because the sensation in the very pits of your soul is so ominous that you do not want to know what it will lead to._

...and Ginny has died, oh _Ginny has died_, and yet this feeling still remains. And...

_And it comes in increments that are not steady and not easy and not regular and not incremental at all, really. It saturates you in doubt and remorse; it asphyxiates you with a horror-filled promise, a banshee's scream, a soulless breath, one... last... and then..._

... And then I open my eyes. Then there are people all about me, and I am somewhere unfamiliar—though it could be familiar, and I would not be any surer—who were oblivious to my awakening. Then there are memories of bright red and flashing green and anguished cries and _Ginny'sdeadbutitshouldhavebeenme. _

But I realize with a start that the people around me are discussing... Me. Unaware of their new listener, they keep on, and my ears tune out the screams and the death to hear past the chaos to their words. This is important, I know it is.

"..._murderer—" _the word stuns me where I lay, and I know that if I had been standing I would have fallen. _Murderer? Murderer? Murderer. Murderer! _

"—he's not... He didn't mean to—! It wasn't his... No—it's... not... and..."

**STOP.**

This is the part where I stop listening, before I really begin to listen at all. This is the part where my mind is covered with large bold print, and the word _murderer_ rings in my eardrums like the blare of a horn. Echoes. Echoes. Echoes.

Yes, this is where I stop listening. Yet if I would have listened then, I would have found out what would befall me much quicker, and possibly avoided some needless grief on my part.

This is when words like _suspicious _and _death _and _Voldemort _come into play. Where the accusations begin to fly and _Malfoy is a Death Eater and we saw him with Edward_ is exposed to the light. There are eye witnesses that have seen me fraternizing with the enemy, so clearly I must have been planning this all along. Clearly I must have intended this to happen. I must hate the Weasleys, hate their guts—I must have killed their daughter out of pure spite. The spell must have never been for me—it was always for her, I had just accidentally been in the way, and only a bit. Maybe it wouldn't have hit me even if I hadn't moved. After all, it's a spell for redheads, isn't it? Made special for just that girl. Some vendetta I have has been nibbling away at me for countless hours now, enticing my murderous heart. This must be the truth.

The children are not allowed into the Order meetings.

**.**

**.**

**FAST FORWARD.**

**.**

**.**

_Listen. Linger. Concentrate, please. You'll hear them whispering, in the echo chamber, the endless winding halls; you'll hear the omens sing._

_What is this terrible sense of foreboding?_

**.**

**.**

**PLAY.**

**.**

**.**

"There is a girl dead, Mister Elric. What do you have to say for yourself?"

"Nothing. I have nothing to say for myself. But I didn't kill her, I didn't want her... I didn't..." _It should have been me. _"I didn't kill her."

"Did you meet with Lucius Malfoy before the attack on Hogsmeade?"

"Yes, I did."

"And did you send word to the Death Eaters that the children were going to be taking a trip to Hogsmeade on the discussed weekend?"

"No! I don't even know _who_ they are! You can't be seriously accusing me of this! It's ridiculous. _I did not kill Ginny Weasley. _I would _never _do that."

_It's all my fault._

_That should have been me._

_Loud, loud, loud, loud, loud, loud, loud, it's loud._

_Listen. Linger._

_Concentrate, please._

**.**

**.**

**SLOW MOTION.**

**.**

**.**

My head lies against the wood of the desk, and my mouth is pulled into a straight, grim line. I eagerly follow each grain of the solid oak as they travel away from my hooded eyes. Anything to distract me, ease my worry, numb the distress, if only for a moment. The room is still (_she was so still that it frightened me, I couldn't...) _and quiet (_the silence pauses, the silence cries, the silence...);_ an accommodating familiarity washes over me and I bless my luck that I be in this room at this moment. That I should have an opportunity to calm myself and put everything into perspective. For what awaits me, in the near future, I am sure will be disastrous. Trouble has a way of following me around, no matter where I went...

...and _G__oddamnit all_ must I always get other people involved?

The terrible cruelty of it all rings true in my mind, but I know I have no right to complain. This is because it appears that despite all of my inauspicious luck, I am the one who Fate decides to spare. So many times I should have died, _it should have been me, _and instead someone else suffers for my mistakes. I can't stand this; this hand that Truth has dealt me is another form of suffering entirely. Deciding that in this life I should watch again and again as those around me fall, and I am powerless to do anything about it.

But no—I am not powerless. I could have done something. That should have been me, right? And... And there were a million things I could have done, a thousand ways I could have saved that girl's life, but I failed in every possible way.

_Like always, _a whisper calls from the back of my head, trudging enthusiastically to the forefront of my conscious thought, _like always. Failure. Alone. It's all your fault._

I haven't even comprehended my own movement until the loud _SMACK _of my right fist splintering my desk reaches my own ears. Sitting up, startled, I stare long and hard at the place where my knuckles have impacted the wood. The pain lances through me immediately after, and I wonder at my desk. Where there should be a compressed dent of fury, splintering cracks, peaking slivers rising out of the oak...there is only dead skin and the slightest glimmer of blood. Slowly, I raise my hand up before my face, and for a moment the fingers look alien to me. Too long, too real, too fleshy, too scraped with the rue of the desk's silent wrath. _Touch me again, _I picture it hissing, _I'll eat your knuckles and suck on your bones._

Shaking my head does nothing to help, and only serves to make me increasingly dizzy. Gripping at the arms of my chair I steady myself, glaring out at the empty desks that sit like silent sentinels on the opposite end of the room. There are alchemy circles scattered about, and for a brief moment I feel like rising from my perch and simply tearing everything in this room apart. Alchemy has done nothing but make people suffer, cause harm, _bring me here. _

Then I take a deep breath and remember, remember that that is the whole point behind everything. Alchemy is beautiful, grounding; it is a miracle waiting to happen, and that it should be used for any intention other than good is horrible. But that's what I have to change. That's what I have to turn around. Alchemist, be thou for thy people.

Yet... I let her die.

A frustrated scream tears from my lungs and I fall from the chair in a spurt of boundless madness, launching my arms outward and losing my already precarious balance almost instantly. "Shit!" I yell, as I hit the floor hard and lay there. I don't dare to move. There is a lump in my throat, one that I cannot find the strength to swallow around, and there is a fire kindling behind the veiled walls of each of my individual sinuses.

Yes, this is very familiar.

I have to be strong. I have to be strong.

**_That I would have to give everything if I ever wanted anything._**

I want, I want so much. I want to take back everything I have done. I want to redo my life from the start, not to disappoint, not to fail, not to make mistakes. I want them all to live—everyone who had died. I want to take their place, offer up my meager existence so that they may have a minute to _be _again. I want to fix _everything. _I want so badly.

No. But—no.

_I couldn't even save one little girl._

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_[Three hours, twenty nine minutes.]_

_._

_._

_._

_._


	13. t w e l v e : Cataclysm

_- Annie -_

_._

_._

**. c h a p t e r t w e l v e .  
Cataclysm**

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**REWIND**.

_The battle is over, but inside my heart the war's still not over._

_And I'm sure it will never be._

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**FAST-FORWARD.**

I think that the only good thing about being alone when you sleep is that no one can see you in your most vulnerable state. Shivering, sweating, whimpering, _crying_ due to the latest nightmare that torments your thoughts. I grip at the blankets for this very reason, still sobbing and shivering. I move the sheets up and down my legs, trying in vain to wipe the sweat from them as they tremble and shiver. Though, maybe that reasoning can turn around; maybe I want someone to hear my screams and wails. Someone to wake me and tell me that it was all just a dream and I'd forget about it before lunchtime.

_Al... Oh, I miss you._

I wish it was just a dream. Ginny really is dead, though—and it's very easily all my fault.

_All my fault, all my fault. Blame, blame._

Quite a common phrase, nowadays, huh? I shake my head and rub my tears away with the surprisingly soft (yet sweaty) palm of my hand before pulling away and staring thoughtfully at the soaked flesh. It's as if I expected to see blood on the damn thing, the way I'm glaring at it. I actually thought I did, briefly, before realizing that it's just the dim light and shadows as I tilt my hand. My hand balls into a fist and I give another quick shake of the head, trying to jog my head back into a _sane_ working order. If that's still possible, that is.

_I'm going crazy._

I kick the covers away and get to my feet. _What time is it?_ I glance around for a clock before realizing that I don't own one, and that the pocket watch I normally carry disappeared at some point. Thinking back, I'm pretty sure I dropped it in the hustle-bustle of a crowd. Or maybe it was pick-pocketed? Who knows. Not like I need it anymore. _Regardless, I'd be willing to bet I only got ten minutes of sleep, tops. _I sigh and give into the _quiet_ 'voice of reason,' getting dressed and going to try and get something to eat.

As I open the door to my classroom, I come face to face with bright sunlight (I do a quick double-take, confirming that my curtains were just drawn and I'd been sleeping off and on through the day) as well as my fifth year class, particularly Hermione, caught in mid-stride toward my door.

"Professor Ed—err, Elric!"

I'm actually surprised that she's still here. Wasn't she friends with Ginn—the girl—Ginny's brother? I clamp down on the inside of my bottom lip, staring off to the side and taking a moment to regain trust of my voice. "G'morning, Hermione—"

"Professor! Are you okay? You look terrible!" _Gee, thanks._ "You weren't at breakfast, or here for _half of class_! Your eyes are so red, too..." She gives me her most worried look as she trails off. I shift uncomfortably from foot to foot before clutching the door frame with my left hand.

"Hermione," I give my somewhat quivering lip a scolding jab. "You...should really stay away from me...anyone that hangs around too long usually tends to..." _Die? Get killed? Be murdered? Mysteriously disappear? Turn into a corrupt dog-human hybrid that only Alchemy could produce? _"Get...hurt..."

She opens her mouth to object to my cracked and spaced statement before being interrupted by an ever-present boy in the back row (_That's odd, he used to sit up front...)_, Terry Boot. "Damn straight," the boy scoffs, glaring over the edge of his book. "I hate to agree, but you should take his advice. It's no good hanging around someone _like...that._"

I swallow deeply, giving an involuntary heave-like sobbing action before attempting to compose myself. It doesn't seem to work so well, nowadays. I don't trust my voice, but I give a solid nod.

Hermione doesn't seem to be facing me, though...

"Are you people truly that _stupid_?" she shouts. "Didn't you _see_ what happened? It was an accident! He didn't even know she was behind him when all that happened!" She glances at me briefly before flinging an arm toward me and sending an angry scowl to the mob of students. "Look at him! _Really _look at him! Does he really look like he could _murder_ a _little girl_?" She glances at me again before looking back to the class. "He's _falling apart._" Her voice cracks.

As well as my strength, holding all this up, and my nausea levels.

All in one motion, it seems, I fall to my knees with my arms thrown out in front of me. Sobbing, heaving, and trying to breathe all at once as blood splashes, splatters, and sloshes onto the stone in front of me. It mixes with the warm droplets dripping off my teeth and ripples as I try to gasp in and out. I might have laughed or smirked slightly when someone exclaims '_Holy shit! _Is that _blood?_" and someone responds with "_No,_ It's _strawberry milkshake_," were it not for the blood that is continuously making its way out of my throat.

Finally, the flowing and heaving stops, and there is only a rather large, rather crimson pool of blood on the ground in front of me, connected to my mouth still by a string of bloody saliva between my lips as evidence.

_(Blood. Red. Just like Ginny's hair.)_

Another second of panicked screeching and whispering, gasps and people pushing to try and get closer and...

"Yes, it's blood! Now move!"

Bingo. She never gives up, does she?

I feel my surprisingly weak and (apparently) surprisingly _light _body (_when did that happen? Well, it make sense, I haven't been eating much...)_ get yanked up by the arm, said arm being tickled by bushy hair, and myself being dragged across the room with my feet and ankles dragging behind me. "We _are_ going to the Hospital Wing, and you _are not_ complaining!"

There is a short thumping of feet and a few small huffs of disbelief. Then, another shoulder takes my other arm, dragging my right side up a bit more and moving me up to my tip-toes. "I'll help too. I don't think you can get him all the way there yourself, no offense..." Ernie MacMillan._ Huh. Good to know Hermione's not the only one_.

.

.

It feels like I've just blinked, but in that time I've most likely been dozing; we've moved up (apparently) three flights of stairs. It doesn't take me long, even in my half-asleep and possibly still-crying state, to decide that these two would make _brilliant_ alchemists.

I feel a drop of blood dribble down my lip. _That is, if I live long enough to teach them..._

I frown and let my eyes droop and slide shut again.

"Oh my god! Hermione! Ernie! What's going on? Are you okay?"

One eye slips open as its corresponding eyebrow arches. I catch sight of Potter (_first name, first name...Harry?_) and the...the red-head...Ginny's brother...

I give a small shiver, as well as a barely audible whimper.

"... Oh, it's _him,_" the redhead realizes with a sneering growl. I wince slightly, guiltily.

"Yes, and _Professor Elric_ is sick, _Ronald._" Hermione growls right back, her grip on my right hand tightening. Ernie squeezes my left hand as well, but his feet shift uncomfortably and he seems rather unsure. He decides to just let Hermione argue it out, I guess.

"He _killed_ her, Hermione! She's—she's _dead_ because of this _bastard_. I can't believe you're helping him! No, I can't believe you're even taking his _class_!" Harry shouts in defense of his friend, who has a look that I recognize. In fact, it's one I'm familiar with... He looks just like I felt when I realized that Al was dead in that alley... when Mom's hand grew cold in mine, when I got the news that Nina was dead, when I realized Hughes had died. A look of loss, of not knowing what to do, of your life being shattered beyond repair. I can see tears flooding his eyes, but he holds them back as he glares at me with undying hatred.

I break down at that look. I don't know if it's because of my guilt, sympathy, or empathy.

I start sobbing again (_I seem to just be getting more and more emotional, these days...), _wanting to curl into a tight ball and wake up to try and wipe the sweat from my legs. "I'm sorry! So..._so sorry._ I wish...I wish I could bring her back...I..." I hang my head and shake it slowly back and forth. "You're right, absolutely, one hundred percent right. It's my fault she's gone...I never...I never should've moved...it should've been me! I'm such a _fucking..._" _coward..._I trailed off, leaving the last word unsaid but clear in the atmosphere.

"You have no idea how I feel!" the red-head shouts, his fists balling at his sides.

_You're wrong! I know exactly how you feel!_

"Al..." I manage to choke out between two sobs.

_SMACK!_

His fist collides with my face. My first thought is how amazingly, no, _bafflingly_ _stupid_ it is to punch somebody on a stairway when he's being held by your best friend. All three of us stumble backward and I immediately, upon instinct, bring my arms in tightly to hold both students against my chest in front of me. With the added weight on my torso, I fly _right_ down, my back scraping against the stone steps harshly, cutting into the flesh under my shirt.

We come to a stop as my head strikes the wall at the landing. I let go of both students and struggle to sit up. Spots dance around my vision so I close my eyes, trying to get my head back into working order. I reopen them to find blood trailing down my nose, but I overlook the small injury and glance between Hermione and Ernie. "Are you all right?" I ask quickly, shifting to be on my hands and knees. I try and suffer down the nausea, but I spit out a bit of blood nonetheless.

Hermione whimpers as she tries to move her foot and my eyebrows furrow in worry. I scoot forward and untie her shoe before slipping both it and the sock off carefully. I prod the ankle gently, getting a loud yelp in response.

Finding a book hurtling toward me, I quickly throw my left hand up to catch the book by the corner. The sharp edge digs into my palm harshly, but I ignore the small prick and set the book down beside me before looking up at the red-head that threw it, who was glaring furiously. "Don't you _dare_ hurt her!"

I jump slightly in shock, my eyes welling up slightly. I shook my head. Enough emotions today—do like you always do, Elric! "I would _never_ hurt her!" I snarl, trying to ignore the crack in my voice. My eyes shift to Harry slightly. He seems more trusting of me, somehow, but still uncertain. He and Ernie have taken a similar posture. Unsure.

"Oh, but you could _Ginny_?"

I get to my feet quickly, swiping the blood from my forehead and the bridge of my nose. I notice how violently I'm trembling, and how high the nausea has skyrocketed, but I take a calculated step forward and promptly _slug the boy in the cheek._

"Stop trying to accuse me of that! I would never take someone's life! That's...it's..." I trail off into a quivering, small voice. My anger is suddenly depleted. "She had a _family_ to come home to...and she's dead...I...if I had..." I take a deep breath and turned from Ron to Hermione. "Your ankle is possibly sprained, if not fractured. We need to take _you_ to the Hospital Wing."

She looks between Ron and me before nodding and placing a bit of weight on her foot, immediately responding with a wince and a small gasp. "I can't walk..."

"I'll carry you—"

"Actually, I'll do it." Ernie says from the side, grinning sheepishly. "I'm the only one that isn't injured here. Harry and Ron look too...shocked to do anything."

I glance at the pair of boys and confirm that my punch has sufficiently shocked the both of them before looking back to Ernie. "Are you sure you're okay with all the stairs?"

"Are you?" He responds, eyebrows furrowing slightly as he glances at my legs.

I give an unenthusiastic huff of a laugh before nodding, unsure. "I'll hold up."

.

.

"Professor Elric!"

I halt at the doors of the Hospital Wing, giving a low groan. Great, just great. I turn, glaring without a second thought at the pink-colored cur. "If you didn't notice, I'm kind of injured. Can your riffraff keep at bay until later?" I give each Auror next to her a weak glare before fixing my gaze back to her.

"I'm afraid not," she doesn't even try to inject 'sweetness' into her voice this time. I don't know whether to consider that good or bad. "You're going to have to come with me."

I yawned, scratching my head and glaring at my fingernails when they come away bloody. "Why?"

There is a pause before, "Don't question the Ministry, ungrateful boy!"

I roll my eyes. "Meaning: You don't have a reason. Why should I be grateful in the first place, anyway?"

"We have unnamed witnesses spotting you with a known Death Eater not a week before the attack on Hogsmeade and the murder of Ginevra Weasley!"

My eyebrow twitches slightly and I cross my arms. "For the _last time,_ I didn't have any _fucking _clue that he was a Death Eater, they were _looking to KIDNAP ME, _I was _drunk—_" Okay, so that last one was a lie—"_and I would never kill an innocent little girl!" _I balled my hands at my sides and let my shoulders tense up. "I'm pretty sure that I told the fucking _reporter person, whatever the hell she was_ this AGES ago!"

"Where are your witnesses, may I ask?" Umbitch, Imabitch, _whatever_ asks _'sweetly_.'

I quickly shoot up my middle finger, pointing to it. "Right there, _lady_!"

.

.

.

.

_[Two hours.]_

_._

_._

.

.


	14. t h i r t e e n : Breakdown

_- Summer -_

_._

_._

**. c h a p t e r t h i r t e e n .  
Breakdown**

.

.

.

.

**PAUSE. **

**REWIND.**

_Blood. Blood. Blood._

_It was red._

_It was red._

_Really red._

_It reminded me of everything I always wanted to kill, wanted to rip apart with my bare hands._

_I'm slipping._

_Can I die already?_

**.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

**FAST FORWARD. **

**PLAY. **

The desire to blame somebody is too great. Everywhere I go, there are eyes. They watch. They make conclusions. I keep my face carefully blank while they pick apart my every move, my every intention. They can deduct anything by their own minds—but instead, they always depending on the opinions of others, of more powerful, influential, _mesmerizing _people. They never make their own decisions.

That's what I decide while I watch Albus Dumbledore talk to his students. His smile is strained, and his eyes are rimmed with black. I know exhaustion when I see it. I have suffered in its inky depths many times.

Draco Malfoy, the little twit. His boasting voice and proud stamina—however arrogant and idiotic—are designed to lure people toward him. His father's tricks, no doubt.

Harry Potter. He's another one. I can practically _see _the raging cloud of dark emotions above his head, fighting for dominance. Rage, guilt, hurt, despair. They're unhealthy. I remember when those emotions coursed through me—wave after wave of desperation. But he has friends who can help him. I had no one but myself. When I think of Potter, I can only think of how weak he is, how his mind is easily changed with every piece of evidence. He'll soon learn that not everything you see is real, and not everyone is what you think.

No, he's trapped in his own bubble. Harry Potter. The name brings bitterness.

I'll watch out for those three.

And then—then, there are the _bitchy _ones. That toad woman—Imabitch? Whatever—she's getting on my last nerves with her overall presence. I think I might go mad if I'm in her vicinity for too long.

I think I already have.

_I miss Al. _

Bile rises and blood rushes and I feel lightheaded but I don't stop walking.

I sit in my seat near Minerva McGonagall, watching—more like listening carefully—to Dumbledore talk with that tinge of iron in his voice. Old age is catching up to him. It's a wonder he's not six feet under yet.

**_._**

**_(a dark black hole and a scream)_**

**_._**

Reaching out a hand, I take the goblet of orange juice that the—house elves, they were?—prepared for me when I asked them to, saying that my digestive system was too delicate for heavy-duty things like pumpkin juice. The sound of it makes me want to wretch. Along with special breakfast, an easy thing, no more than half a portion. I haven't been hungry these days. Can you blame me?

Well, yes. Of course you can. It's the new trend.

Umbridge stalked off after our little _encounter _the other day. She's now ignoring me, thank God. But then again, so is everyone else. In the span of two days, I've received multiple notices of resignation from my class. But there are a few students remaining—Hermione, Ernie MacMillian, those kids. I suppose I should take it as a compliment. But I don't. Instead, I feel like something is ripping me from inside out.

When I reach for a fork to pierce a waffle, I recoil at the sensation of burning, knowing that the fork has gone up in flames. A prank. Of course. Hate doesn't come in just the simplest forms, does it? No one looks my way, though, so it must be some kind of disillusioned fire.

I narrow my eyes. Something like that didn't just come alone.

Under the table is a little green note with a silver border. I take it out carefully and unfold it. On it, there is a glowing gold thread that depicts a picture of a snake and a sword going through it. The message, however strange it is, is crystal clear.

_Slytherins are watching. Voldemort will kill you for not cooperating._

Just in the image of a snake being impaled. Ingenious. Not.

I crush it between my hands and unknowingly create a transmutation circle, based in my anger. I separate my hands as the familiar energy crackles everywhere, and though the fire reappears my hands are unharmed. Flitwick, seated next to me, watches with fascination and surprise.

"Nice charm!" he appraises.

"It _isn't _a charm," I grit out, feeling the bubbling anger settle down into a hot coil at the pit of my stomach.

**_._**

**_(screaming and thrashing and grabbing and greedyletgoletgoletgo)  
_**

**_._**

I refuse to look at anyone else for the rest of breakfast, or even eat. I've lost any will to do anything.

.

.

It's not like I'm blind. I notice. I notice all of them. I know how they suspect me of being that Death Eater that killed Ginny—even though another Death Eater was heading toward me to _kill me _and _capture me—_and they make judgments before they even know the whole story. It's just another reason why I hate wizards.

But I don't hate all of them, I guess. Dumbledore—however irritating and however obnoxiously nosy he is—he's someone trustworthy. He's been covering for me in the Ministry, I can tell. He's just not telling me. So I pretend not to notice. I don't even shoot another look his way when he passes by; both of us know that it's just his job. He's the boss and I'm the subordinate.

I've had this choking feeling in my chest all day.

Sneering at Umbitch (I swear she started it), I make my way to my fifth years' classroom. There are only seven students left, out of the whole dozen. I suppose wizards really are little dogs that follow their masters.

"Morning," I say. The few that are here reply strongly, to my surprise. "All right, we'll begin class with a few transmutation circles on stone..." I pick up a stick of chalk and begin to write on the board as I always do, but something stops me from writing on it at the last second. For the longest time, I'm just standing there, looking at the edged curve of the chalk touching the blackboard.

"Professor Elric?"

**_._**

**_(pain pain so much pain screaming letting go ripping)  
_**

**_._**

I spin around but don't answer Susan Bones, who had originally called my name. Instead, I let the chalk fall to the floor.

"We'll be having a special class today." I close my book as I speak, motioning for my students to do the same. At least I know that they will follow me like true students; in a way, that attack on Hogsmeade let me know who was really yearning to do alchemy. There is a vigor in their eyes that I remember clearly in mine. "Stand up."

I walk over to the front of the class, where they all stand pin-straight in a line. "I want you to tell me, MacMillian," I nod to Ernie, "are you afraid of death?"

Ernie stumbles mentally—I can see—at what I said, thinking it over seriously. Finally, he swallows and answers honestly, "Yes."

I nod to him, satisfied. "Good."

Walking to the front desk again, I take a deep breath when the coppery tang of blood fills my senses. I force it back down with a cough. "Today, we'll be doing something that I won't teach you ever again, so listen to me carefully.

"There are two main taboos of alchemy: creating gold, and creating life," Against my will, my voice changes and becomes soft. "Gold is another story. Life, however...you cannot create it without paying the ultimate price. Everyone has a soul. Nothing, and I mean absolutely _nothing, _can replace someone's soul. The exchange—remember what I told you?—is too large for someone to pay. Almost nobody comes out of that transmutation alive. There are no second chances. Everyone is due one life. Is that clear?"

Nodding and agreeing. However, I can see my sharp words dig into their brains and make a mark that will last forever. "So hear me clearly when I say this: you will _not, _under _any_ circumstancesdo any alchemy without my permission. Understood? For the rest of your little lives here until I give the okay."

"Yes Professor Elric"s fly across the room. My head starts to pound relentlessly. Maybe I'll give them this little life lesson and walk away from it all. I can't help but think that they need to know this.

"Are you all serious about my class?" I ask quietly, forcing myself not to put a hand on my temple.

"Yes sir!" A Ravenclaw—Anthony Goldstein, was it?—answer with force in his voice. I crack a smile, but it is too painful; I'm sure it appears as a grimace instead. The heat in the pit of my stomach leaked to my hands.

_**.**_

_**(so much pain truth guidance light dark paradox live alive dead live alive dead livealivedeadnotalivenotdead not really)**_

_**.**_

I raise an eyebrow. "Fine. Then class is dismissed." I feel my voice breaking, and the small trickle of blood drips past my lip. I lick them and keep it in. "And...I want you to read chapter ten in the textbook. Memorize every word. And don't forget."

They leave in silence. Hermione does so with some trepidation, looking at me carefully, but I slam the door after waving her away and let all the horrible feelings inside me splash to the floor.

.

.

When I am walking to my room once again to get painkillers, I am stopped by a toad. An overgrown toad. With horribly bright pink things around her wrapped up toad-ness. I almost forget how to breathe, the stench is so bad.

"Professor Elric," Bitch, let's call her that, says sweetly. I think she's contaminated the meaning of the word 'sweet.' "I believe we didn't get to finish our conversation."

"I believe that I don't want to."

I slip past her and start to walk away, adamant on getting to my meds. They, at least, keep me sane enough to think clearly. When emotions and feelings and actions and consequences begin to mush together in my mind, I sometimes just can't take it. They began to hurt, like knives that slash with every word.

Bitch scowls. "Well, this is about your actions during the little raid at Hogsmeade; witnesses—"

"Once _again, _I was _drunk, _you are an _ass, _and I need to go to _sleep._" Didn't we go over this yesterday? Is she dumb? No, don't answer that question. I don't think there is a single insult in the book that could explain this thing's horribleness. "So if you would fucking move, we could all get through this nicely."

"I don't think you understood me, _Professor Elric,_" Oh, now she's getting pissed at me. Bitch. "But accusation of being a Death Eater—well, that's a serious charge—and the Ministry just can't accept that—"

"WELL THEN!" I roar, face flaming. I can see the slight intimidation on her face. "WHY DON'T YOU GO FIND A DEATH EATER AND ARREST HIM? _What? Can't find any because you're so incapable? Listen, lady—I've checked the rules, all that shit. I was drunk enough to not know who I was with, what I was doing._" Skull feels like flames are roaring above it. Blood rushing. Hands warm. "But, apparently, you're just _hung up on me. _Can't you do your job right? What kind of fucking Ministry _is this?_ What evidence do you have? Did you hear what they were saying when they were _FIGHTING WITH ME?_ Capture him, don't kill him! You think working with Death Eaters mean that they want to kill me? _Fucking leave me alone already!"_

I don't care. I don't care. I can't care anymore. Vision lined with red. Stomach curled and twisted. Bile in throat. Head pounding. Pounding. Hurting. Stop it. Won't stop. Red red red. Urge to push. Urge to rip. Urge to die. Red red red. Mauled and destroyed. Fire burning. Breath in short pants. Eyes, watching, staring, everywhere, nowhere._  
_

Okay. So there are people staring at me, but they're just staring and _I can't take it anymore—_I cough and there are blood spatters on my hand. I scowl and push her aside, walking back to my room, every step like lead hanging me down.

.

**_(Al Al Al Al Al Al)_**

**_._**

When I reach my room, I feel the world collapse beneath me. Soon, it won't be the only thing that's collapsing.

_Thank god I've finally slipped.  
_

**_._**

**_._**

**_._**

**_._**

**_(elsewhere, elsewhen, a boy in a dark alley regains his sense of the world and opens his eyes)  
_**

**_._**

**_._**

**_._**

**_._**

_[Twenty-five minutes.]_

_._

_._

_Tick..._

_Tock..._

_._

_._

_._

_._


	15. f o u r t e e n : Son of a Man

_- Laura - Summer - Maya - Annie -  
_

_._

_._

**. c h a p t e r f o u r t e e n .  
Son of a Man**

.

.

**STOP.**

**REWIND.**

**PLAY.**

_._

_.  
_

_._

_._

_[Twenty-one minutes.]_

_._

_.  
_

_._

_._

I'm not sure, at first, what awakens me from my impromptu nap.

The stiff neck I received from sleeping over a desk certainly isn't it; that's happened often enough that I barely notice it anymore. I glance down distastefully at the papers strewn about before focusing my attention on the door opposite my desk. Something is going on outside; three people are yelling, and one is louder than the others. That is odd in and of itself, as it's past midnight. Even when I work late, like today, there are usually no other people around to disturb the silence.

Obviously, that is not the case tonight.

I know it's irrational, but my stomach begins twisting on itself. _Something is not right._ I can feel it in the atmosphere of the place, in the very air I breathe. _Something is horribly, horribly wrong. _I've had this feeling before. It never ceases to terrify me.

.

_[Sixteen minutes.]  
_

.

I listen intently to the commotion, trying to pick out what exactly is going on, whether it's just an argument or if I need to intervene. The loudest voice is nearly indecipherable; I can barely make out, "—_'s gone_! _Gone gone gone gone gone..._"

My gut twists tighter; I think I might recognize that voice. _Dear God, no..._ I unconsciously reach for the top drawer. Whether my instincts are right or wrong, everything is not all right. Someone has been hurt, maybe kidnapped, maybe _killed_—

Before I can pull my gloves on, Kain Fuery bursts through the door, his face bloodless and horrified.

"Colonel, we don't know what he's saying, _help_—!"

.

_[Fourteen minutes.]_

.

The Sergeant Major is, by nature, an excitable man, but there's so much terror, so much _desperation_ in his shrill voice that I immediately rise to my feet. "Who is it? What's going on?" I'm sure I recognize the hysterical voice in the outer office now, but I beg the world to prove me wrong. _Not him! Anyone but_—

Then he bursts through the door in a stumbling mess of blue coat and gold hair and scarlet blood (so much blood_, so much blood_, there's something wrong, he shouldn't be alive when there's that much blood_)_, still screaming and crying and trying his damnedest to reach my desk.

(_They only left half an hour ago, what could have happened, why is he so hurt, oh my God he's dying and what's going on_— )

Riza Hawkeye runs in after him, her normally stoic face swathed in panic, and I know this is no joke. This boy—_he's no more than a boy; who could have done this to him?_—is grievously injured; he's bleeding from a wound in his abdomen; he's halfway to Death's door as he drags himself desperately along the couch.

I dash around my desk, meeting him halfway, steadying him as he falls into my chest. "What happened to you? Who did this?"

"He's gone...it's all my fault, _all my fault_—"

"Calm down! We're going to help you," I say desperately, because there is nothing else I _can_ say. I gesture madly to Fuery to call an ambulance, and he jumps to obey, rushing to the phone on my desk. I hear, detachedly, that he dials the emergency line, and that he is talking in a high, terrified voice to the operator. This should sooth my horrible, traitorous nerves—_he's going to be fine, help is on the way, just hang on a little longer_—but it does the opposite. Somehow, the contrast of Fuery's panic with the operator's calm, barely audible voice makes the situation seem even worse.

.

_[Thirteen minutes.]_

.

Blood overwhelms my senses; the boy's pain and utter _despair_ permeate the room. But I refuse to let go, refuse to abandon this helpless, bleeding boy to his death. "Just tell us what happened, you're going to be fine—"

He lets out another sob as I carefully lay him down on the couch, staunching the worst wound with my hands as best I can. "You can't—he won't—_I'm so sorry, it's my fault_—"

"What happened?" Riza asks, rushing up to speak with him and help me with his wounds. Unfocused eyes stare up at us; all I can see is self-loathing, guilt, and emptiness. That might be the most horrifying part of the situation; those eyes have always been so full of life, of joy, of every emotion under the sun. _Never_ have I seen this boy so defeated or helpless or _small_.

It's as if he's totally and irrevocably lost the will to live.

_._

_[Nine minutes.]_

.

"_Stay with us!_" I roar at him, freeing a blood-soaked hand momentarily to strike his face as his eyes flutter closed. He can't just _die; _that isn't the kid I know—he would fight until the very end. It can't end now—_not after everything they've been through, he can't just_—

Then it hits me. The force of the thought is so strong that I physically stumble back on my heels; I forget how to breathe. _No. It can't be_... But that is the only explanation. They are together, _always together; _there were two, and now there is only one, and there is something so fundamentally _wrong _with this that I feel physically sick. For the boy's sake, I hope that I am wrong. Looking at his face, I know that I am right.

Riza asks him again, but she speaks in a gentle tone, like a mother would. I can see she is trying her hardest not to burst into tears, to be the strong, supporting mother figure the boy has not had in ten years. But the question is useless; I already know; surely, nothing could drain this lively boy of everything so quickly except—

He whispers a name, barely audible through his sobs and labored pants. I am right. Riza gasps sharply, the tears finally breaking through. _No. _This can't be the end. His brother can't be dead, because Elrics don't just _die_. After fighting tooth and nail through every level of Hell and emerging victorious, to fall like _this_—

Edward Elric grips my uniform tighter, and whispers to us to let him go.

.

.

.

.

.

.

_[Five minutes.]_

.

.

.

.

.

.

**STOP.**

**FAST FORWARD.**

**PLAY._  
_**

The sky is too dark and windy. Its roaring weather beats against the windowpanes and sometimes looks like it could shatter the fragile glass. It never does. Sometimes I wish that it would break it down.

When I enter the Great Hall, the whole room becomes quiet. I don't look them in the eye, but I can tell that they look at me with those hateful, distrustful eyes; being in Dumbledore's protection doesn't give up the suspicion of me being any less a traitor. I wish to speak out; I wish to yell and scream and bellow at them to _stop being asses _and start _looking _for what's right in front of them, but I keep my mouth shut and say not a word.

_I can't save a little girl. _

The notion repeats in my mind from that day, and keeps repeating. I may never stop repeating it. Images of Nina, sweet Nina, and Ginny, innocent Ginny, flash and I have to struggle not to shut the world out and keep to myself. It's so _hard. _Why is it so hard? Why does it hurt so much? _I can't save a little girl. _I can't even do that. I'm worthless.

I do not recognize the looks of pity and sympathy I receive from some of the other professors; they, surely, know the story, but I'd feel better if they didn't, if they blamed me too, because I know that it's all my fault. Some teachers sneer, like Professor Snape. Yet I know that it does not have any heart behind it; its vindictive look does not etch me. Professor Umbridge sits upon her seat like some kind of _queen._ She smirks and looks at me like she's got me, hook, line, and sinker.

Too bad I've held on to the bait.

.

_[Four minutes.]_

.

"Good morning, Professor Elric," McGonagall says out of courtesy. I reply back and hope my voice isn't too strained. _  
_

Pain. There's so much pain. Dark, screaming, grabbing. Black hands. Hopelessness. The feeling of ripping and tearing, of the whole world falling apart, of the whole universe dying and there was nothing - absolutely _nothing, _do you hear me? - that you can do about it because you were _useless. _

**_(The Gate.)_**

"Ah, would you please pass the pumpkin juice?" asks round-faced Pomona Sprout. I follow the line of hands as they pass the large golden pitcher down to her.

Eyes. They watch you everywhere. The Gate is all and nothing and one. It is in my mind, crawling over the darkest holes that keep me still to my sanity. I'm slipping. I know I'm slipping. The Gate is just helping me fall faster. I should give it a pat on the back when I meet it again. If I do. Because it seems like I might be forever trapped in here, chained to the sins that weren't mine and to the crimes I didn't commit.

"You know, the seventh years are planning this..." It's an interesting topic. I should listen to the gossip more often. They tell me things that I don't want to hear, but it is information that I can use against the students anyways.

Al. Al is alive. Remember that. And don't forget. Whatever you do, just don't forget.

"Ah, Professor Elric," Flitwick says from next to me, pointing out something large and paper on the house tables. "You might not want to read that. It's a paper led by the idiots in the Ministry; nothing in it's nice to hear, and rarely ever true."

Oh. The media. That is the _least _of my problems, honestly.

"Thank you," I still say, because I know I would've torn apart the paper otherwise. "I'll keep mind of that." And I really mean it.

I don't think that there's going to be any saving Edward Elric, now is there? He's already fallen deep into his dark hole...

.

.

.

_[Three minutes.]_

_._

_._

_._

_The newspaper is complete bullshit._

I know it from the headline, the very first words, and I don't even bother paying any more attention to them after a meaningless glance. They're so ridiculous that they hardly make sense to me. I'm so exhausted, so torn apart, that this paper filled with lies seems a burden too heavy for me to even hold before my face. Yet I find myself roving through it, delving deep into its nonsensical myths. There's something in here about me, and I wouldn't care, but for some reason I want to know how bad it is. There's this unexplainable _want_ that has me scanning over the text, something that whispers in the back of my mind and says...

It's so quiet...

But it's there...

_Keep on. You're almost there. _

Where? I want to scream it; I want to wail into the air around me so that everyone can hear me and know that I want answers, and I want them now. _Where? WHY?_

But in the face of everything that's happening around me, these questions seem as ludicrous as the stories in this newspaper. No one's going to answer me. No one gives a shit.

I throw the newspaper down on the table in front of me and cross my arms with a huff. The papers splay and land on some story I couldn't care less about—and I don't know why I was even beginning to care before—written by some journalist who I couldn't care less about, about something that I, most likely, couldn't care less about.

Fuck this.

**STOP.**

My hand comes down in one swift motion of anger.

.

.

.

_[Two and a half minutes.]_

_._

.

.

I nuzzle my head in the crook of my arm, twisting to try and get comfortable in my chair in front of my fifth-year class. I briefly consider sinking to the floor before shaking the thought off and arching my back slightly.

[_Two minutes._]

Right when I am about to drift to sleep, _right_ when my eyes slide closed, heavy talking and debating breaks out. Shouts, arguing, fighting, agreeing and disagreeing. I groan loudly and cut them off, getting to my feet and kicking my chair into the heavy pile of bookmarked tomes next to my desk, sending sheets flying.

[_One minute_.]

I stomp forward and snatch the newspaper away from Justin Finch-Fletchley, grumbling to myself. "Damn it, I was trying to sleep." I shake my head and lean against my desk, shaking out the newspaper they were having so much of a fuss about.

[_Forty-nine seconds._]

I never actually read it, anyway. Did they even get the story straight? Of course not.

[_Thirty-six seconds._]

My eyes flick right over the picture, ignoring it, and go straight to the words.

[_Twenty-three seconds.]_

Of course, shortly after, a huge force slams into my ribcage, directly over my heart.

[_Eighteen seconds.]_

There's a loud pounding in my ears; my heart speeds up to try and ignore it. Warning bells flare up in my mind and I snap my head up, shooting directly to the door. Then to the windows. The pain and clamping dull; my heart slows; I furrow my eyebrows. I slowly look down, arching an eyebrow.

[_Eleven seconds, forty-six __milliseconds_.]

The...paper?

[_Six seconds, fifty-eight milliseconds_.]

I gradually look down, scanning over the title. As expected, my heart rate speeds up and the throbbing accelerates.

[_Four seconds, forty-seven milliseconds.]_

I briefly scann over the article, picking out and prying apart the words to conclude that the author is bullshitting everyone.

[_Two seconds, thirty-two milliseconds_.]

I shift in confusion as my eyes turn toward the left side of the page; the pounding turns into explosions, small and brief, on the left side of my torso.

[_One__ second, ten milliseconds.]_

My eyes drift slowly, passing over the barrier between words and picture.

[_Twenty-eight milliseconds.]_

The picture?

_[Ten milliseconds.]_

What's so special...

_[Nine milliseconds_.]

So... important...

_[Eight milliseconds_.]

Cords seem to snap in my heart, ripping and tearing muscle and tissue and bone to pieces as the anxiety increases. My heart is dutifully still pumping away—_thump, thump, thump, thumpthumpthump thuthututhu—_shivers wracked my body; my fingers claw through the edges of the paper.

_[Seven milliseconds_.]

I remember the day this photograph was taken. Minerva stands at the edge of the picture. It's almost comical; she's shoving away a pesky reporter and pushing Hermione another way, down the hall.

_[Six milliseconds.]_

Then there is Dumbledore, a hand on an undiscovered someone's shoulder as he argues with Umbridge. A calm expression is on his face, but his posture is tense.

_[Five milliseconds.]_

_[Four milliseconds.]_

_[Three milliseconds.]_

_[Two milliseconds.]_

_[One millisecond...]_

And then there is a young man where I had stood. A very, very familiar one. His face is pulled into a deeply annoyed pout (one that's almost unbearably adorable). One that used to glare at his brother as he argued with Winry...

[ZERO.]

_Time is up._

I drop the paper, eyes wide and nearly falling out of their sockets. _That isn't me_. I make a choked sound, a disbelieving wheeze that cuts through the students' arguments and causes silence to hang in the room. I slide down the wood of Justin's desk to my knees on the floor. I weakly grope for the paper and put my hand on it. Gulping, I look back down.

_Alphonse...that boy in the picture... That boy is Alphonse..._

I let the right hand_ that had never been metal_ slide into short hair _that had never been long_. "So that means... I... _I—I'm Alphonse...?_"

I stare down at the stone between my knees, shoulders hunching back into their tense state.

"But...that would mean..."

_I've been hallucinating this entire time?_

It's so clear, now, that I'm _me._ My hair is short; my fingers are long and bony. I don't have any automail because I've _never_ had it. I have clear memories, _vivid_ memories, of living five years as a suit of armor. I'm not experiencing any of the impulsive feelings I have been for the past four months.

_The impulsive feelings that Brother__ has._

Oh God, I thought I was my brother..._all this time...?_

And that leads me to how I'm in this predicament in the first place._  
_

"I died." I whisper, though in the silence it seems loud. "I died. I died. I died. Brother... Brother, he... Brother, he... he... he tried to... he _did_... he's..." My breath comes out shaky and loud and sharply sucked back in. Out. In. Out. Hyperventilating. That's what is happening. A large stone gate flashes before my unseeing eyes.

_"Well, Alphonse Elric, _you're_ the toll this time. I'm afraid you won't be seeing your brother in quite a while, now, in exchange for your life..."_

What did he mean? _Brother tried to bring me back._ And—as payment—Truth separated us—?

But that can't be enough! Human transmutation is _impossible_! And yet, here I am, alive, when I had been killed by those muggers...surely, that means that this separation is only part of the toll; the the rest of it—

"_He's gone!_ I _killed _him!" I wail—_in my own voice; _it's far higher than it has been; _I've been delusional this whole time—_as I tuck my head down and tug at my hair. "If I fought... _just a little harder!_ I wouldn't... He wouldn't..." I openly scream in frustration and cry like a baby. That is what I am, after all... I'm only sixteen... "If I hadn't died, if he hadn't needed too... He didn't... _Why couldn't he just leave me dead!_" I screech and wail and curl into myself on the ground. Eventually I give up on the tight ball and flop senselessly into a loose, weak fetal position. I feel embarrassed; I am a teacher crying openly in front of his fifth-years. Though... I damn well deserve it.

"If I had just _fought harder, I wouldn't have died_ and he wouldn't have had to _try and do that_ and..." I make a few high-pitched whimpers and cry from my stomach, tucking it in and leaning forward.

(Nothing else matters anymore, because I am alive and Brother is dead and the world is all wrong.)

"Ed?"

I don't respond, continuing my small tantrum. Well, okay, my huge fit of crying and making a huge scene in front of fifteen year olds.

"...Ed?"

"Please... Please don't... Just don't call me that... Please." _That's not my real name, it's never been my name, don't call me Brother, I don't deserve it, he deserves so much more, he's so much better—_

Another few steps forward. Then another set. Hermione kneels down and puts a gentle hand on the back of my head. "Are you... are you okay?"

I press my forehead to her knee. "N-no," I respond, trying to compose myself enough to speak. It isn't working. "No. I'm really... I'm really _not_ okay."

A gentle whisper from a student. Justin. "He's gone nuts..."

Another student—Ernie—rebukes him angrily before coming to squat on my other side. "Do you want us to take you to the—"

"N-no..." I drop my hand and roll over onto my back. Sitting up with a deep, shaky breath, I look toward the class and point to the door slowly. "I think...you should all leave. Go study for a test, or...or something." I pause before sniffling slightly. "No homework, or anything. Just...leave. Please."

There are mutters of uncertainty—"Is this some sort of test...?" and "He didn't even make me do push-ups for being off-task..." as well as a short response to that last one with, "When a monkey sees a banana, he does not question the banana's existence; he simply _eats the banana_. Let's go!"

I use the desk to help me get to my feet and tell Hermione and Ernie to leave as well. I need some time to think—

"Tell us what just happened." Hermione demands, fists clenched at her sides. She looks angry, at first glance, but also worried and upset.

Ernie hesitates a moment but steps to Hermione's side and hardens his features. "Tell us what's going on. Now. What was that all about...?" He kneels down and picks up the newspaper. Holes are torn in the side now, and specks of blood are flecked across the horrible, truthful, _lying_ page.

I blink and glance to the ground, where a large puddle of blood is. I raise an eyebrow and bring my hand up to rub my chin lightly. Blood has stayed there in a sickening waterfall. I didn't even notice that I threw up.

"... No," I say, with such Ed-like finality that I want to be sick all over again. "I asked you to leave. Please. I need to...I have to figure some things out." I stumble away from their reaching hands, their prying eyes, and make my way to my office door. I have just enough presence of mind to transmute the door away before collapsing on the floor in a bloody, sobbing mess.

_My name is Alphonse Elric._

_What am I going to do?_

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_[Four hours, thirty-six minutes.]_

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	16. f i f t e e n : Half of my Heart

_- Laura -_

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**. c h a p t e r f i f t e e n .  
Half of my Heart**

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**STOP.**

_My name is Alphonse Elric._

_I want to die._

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_[Six hours, eleven minutes.]_

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**PLAY.**

It only takes Hermione and Ernie a few seconds to resume their barrage on what used to be the door to my office. They continue to call me "Professor Ed;" if only I can catch my breath, I would yell, _scream_ at them to stop. _That isn't my name_; I don't deserve to be called Brother, because Brother has offered up his life _twice_ for mine, now, even though he's a much better person than I've ever been. This time, the Truth must have taken _everything_.

What do I have to live for anymore? I might as well just die.

"_Professor! If you don't let us in, we'll blast our way through!_" Hermione yells. I almost smile; I'm not very far from the wall; maybe if the explosion is large enough, they'll take care of getting rid of me. I don't move, don't respond, and wait to see what will happen.

_Nothing matters anymore._

One beat. Two. Three. A whisper of a spell barely carries through the wall, and then I see Hermione and Ernie, running through, concern clear on their faces. I am not dead. It was a small explosion. I feel lost for a moment.

"Look, Ed, whatever just happened, it was bad, wasn't it? Let us take you to the Hospital Wing, Madame Pomfrey's got something for shock—"

I shake my head, not trusting myself to speak. No amount of shock potions will help this; my entire _existence_ is the problem. _Professor Ed. Professor Ed. Professor Ed._

I throw up again, all over their feet as they rush to me. What do they expect to do? Tell me all of this has been a terrible, terrible dream, and all I have to do is wake up? Short of bringing Brother here and proving that he's okay, there's _nothing_ that can be done to fix this situation. Not now. Not ever.

They ignore the blood, kneeling in it and putting hands on my shoulders, on my arms, supporting me as I fall to one side. My vision blurs; the world is spinning in hues of grey and crimson; Hermione and Ernie both yell as I lose focus entirely and pass into blissful, unknowing oblivion.

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_[Seven hours, forty-one minutes.]_

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When I wake up, I am laying down in a place I do not recognize. The walls are white; the ceiling is white; the person leaning over me is dressed all in white.

_Is this the Gate? _Excellent. Maybe I've died. Maybe I could strike a deal with Truth, bring Brother back, somehow, because _I_ came back to life, right? So of _course_ it's possible. _Or,_ if that fails, I could just pass through and meet up with Brother. If there is such a thing as an afterlife. Brother would be there, and Mom, and Hughes, and Nina, and Aunt and Uncle Rockbell, and even _Ginny,_ and—

Who am I kidding? I'd go straight to hell. I can't even _count_ the number of lives I've ruined...

_But it can't be worse than the existence I'm leading now, right?_

_._

_._

I realize, belatedly, that I am not at the Gate. The woman leaning over me is Poppy Pomfrey, the school nurse. I cringe away as she tries to put a hand on my forehead, her brow wrinkled in concern.

Brother hates hospitals.

_But then, you're not Brother, are you?_

"Edward, what happened to you?" she asks, her tone accusatory and confused and worried all at the same time. I see Hermione and Ernie hovering a few feet away, out of Pomfrey's way. "Half of your insides are gone, and my regenerating spells aren't working. It's a wonder you're still _alive— "_

They're calling me by Brother's name again. It is nearly unbearable. I ignore her worried rambling— it's old news, anyway; I've been living like this for months; what's another couple of hours?— and decide to correct her on the first half. At least, that way, they can put the correct name on my tombstone.

_If they even give me a grave. Desecrating my body and putting it on public display seems more likely._

I don't blame them in the slightest.

"Alphonse," I rasp out. They don't seem to understand, and I try again. "My name is Alphonse."

All three of them look so confused, but I don't see why. I'm telling them in a very straightforward manner that I've been lying to them all for the past four months. Why don't they hate me? Yell at me and hit me and call me a liar? Walk out of my life, turn me over to the Ministry, leave me to die?

_Please, do all of that._ I deserve anything they can think of doing to me.

"Your name is Alphonse?" Hermione asks after a moment, looking utterly bewildered. "But why did you say it was— "

I cut her off before I hear Brother's name again. I'm sure I will throw up again if I do, and that would cause one more inconvenience for these people. I can't do that, when I've already ruined their lives in such terrible ways.

"I have to go." I sit up suddenly, swinging my legs over the edge of the bed and standing up, walking toward the door. "There's something I have to do."

"You're in no condition to be walking around!" the nurse says indignantly, reaching to stop me. I avoid her grasping hands with ease and continue out the door at a strong pace. I know what I have to do now. If it worked one way, then the Gate would _have_ to accept the opposite. Brother sacrificed his life for mine, so I can sacrifice mine for his. It is logical, an equivalent exchange, the only way I can atone for everything I've done—

A small voice in the back of my head says that Brother would kill me for doing what I know is the only way out. But it doesn't matter, as long as he survives.

I find my way back to my office quickly, transmuting both doors— to the hall and to the classroom— back into thick, solid wall, adding some reinforcement to it. I hear two voices— Hermione and Ernie—trying different spells to get through. But the wall is much stronger than before; there's no way a fifth year could blast his way through _that_. Satisfied with my work, I turn to my office, considering my options. Just flat-out killing myself wouldn't accomplish anything; a dead person is worth nothing to the Truth. So, logically, all I have to do is activate a Human Transmutation circle. That's probably what Brother did.

Brother, I love you. _So much._

_._

_[Eight hours, four minutes.]_

_._

The circle is in my mind; I am totally prepared to face the Gate, face the Truth, and die so that he will live.

_This is it._

Just as I am about to clap my hands, strangely, _inexplicably_, there is a crackling from the wall. It gives way, and Hermione and Ernie dash in, wide-eyed and terrified. We stare at each other for a moment, but I will not be distracted. I finish the motion; my arms form the circle. Just before I am able to complete the transmutation, before I can press my hands to my chest, there is a shrill cry, words I am unfamiliar with.

But that is unimportant. What _is_ important is that I can't move my hands. Not a muscle in my body will respond.

I topple to the ground, still stuck with my palms pressed together. I do my best to glare up at them even as tears leak from my eyes. I was so close, _so close_, to saving Brother. Why don't they understand? Brother's life is so much more important than mine; he can accomplish so much more; my life is _worthless_ compared to his. Nobody, _nobody_, needs me. If I were to leave this—_any—_world, it wouldn't matter, because it would _bring Brother back._

"What were you about to do?" Hermione demands; her voice is equal parts furious and horrified. "What kind of alchemy was that?" I don't know how she expects me to answer when every single one of my voluntary muscles is paralyzed. All I am able to do is glare at them as much as my silent sobbing will allow.

"We'll let you go as long as you don't try anything else," Ernie says, walking forward cautiously and pulling my hands apart. Somehow, he can move them, even when I cannot. "We're going to keep your hands apart, but don't go drawing any circles, all right?"

I am so drained that I don't try to break free from them once the spell is lifted. Hermione holds one hand, Ernie holds the other, and they both guide me to a chair. I sink into it easily; I have absolutely no energy, no willpower to do anything at all. I know they think it's strange. Brother would have fought back; Brother would have gone through Hell and back to break free, _but I'm not Brother._ I'm only Alphonse, and _only Alphonse_ can't hold a candle to the brilliance that _Edward Elric_ possesses.

"What were you going to transmute?" Hermione asks carefully, looking me straight in the eye. I avert my gaze; surely, they will yell at me for my plan. But they wouldn't understand; _nobody_ would understand. I have to do this, to atone for my sins, to make things right again—

"Were you—going to kill yourself?" Ernie asks, his voice cracking halfway through. I shake my head immediately; of course, it crossed my mind, but I have to make sure Brother is alive. _I have to go to the Gate again as a living person._

"How did you get in?" I ask, even though I already know the answer. I had started teaching transmutations only a week ago, and they were two of the few that had successfully transmuted anything. They had obviously realized the same thing that Scar had: if you stop at the deconstruction stage, you can get through any obstacle.

I don't know whether I should praise them for figuring it out, or curse them for stopping me.

"That's not important. And you know the answer, anyway. We deconstructed the wall." Hermione correctly interprets my expression, already turning back to the more pressing topic at hand. "_What were you doing?_"

"Do either of you have siblings?" I ask after a moment. Even if I'm going to go through with it, soon, it is only fair to these two— the only students who have stood by me so stoutly— to tell them the truth. Or, at least, some of it. Inexplicably, they still care for me, someone their own age who has caused horrors so terrible they can't even imagine them. They, at least, would mourn me. I do not know why.

Both shake their heads, looking rather lost. I huff humorlessly. "You wouldn't understand."

"Try us," Ernie says, glaring hard. Unconsciously, it seems, his grip tightens on my wrist.

I look at both of them in turn and realize neither of them will back down. "Do you remember— the day I told you bringing people back to life is impossible?" Both nod, confusion covering their faces. "Apparently—apparently I was wrong. And— "

"What do you mean, you were wrong?" Hermione asks sharply. "Everything you said makes perfect sense. The equivalent exchange is too high for someone to pay alone. You said people _die_ and _still_ don't succeed. How— "

"I was dead," I say quietly. I know her logic is sound, and that I shouldn't be here right now, but then, the Gate just _loves_ to toy with me and Brother, doesn't it? "Back home—Brother and I were attacked. They killed me. He— he— performed Human Transmutation to — to bring me back. I ended up in this parallel universe, here." My voice cracks badly at the end, and both students stare at me, their mouths dropping open.

"And you— you remembered that just now? In class?" Ernie guesses, regaining his composure first.

I shake my head. "Ed— he— he has to be _dead_ now, since I was dead, it's equivalent— "

"Ed is your brother?" Hermione breathes, her face quickly draining of all color. I nod, not trusting myself to say what I realized when I looked at that newspaper. If I say it aloud, it will make it a reality. This won't just be a nightmare anymore; it will be real, _very_ real, and there's no escaping from that. "You— you thought you were your brother?"

_Hearing_ it spoken aloud is nearly as bad; what is left of my insides churn, and I throw up again, covering my pants, Hermione, and Ernie. They barely flinch; Hermione immediately goes to rub my back, while Ernie cleans up the blood with a spell. "I'm so sorry..." she mutters, her voice heavy with grief. Grief. For _me_. The notion is so odd that my dark train of thought stops for a moment. But then I remember. I remember my goal. I have to reach it, _no matter what_. It doesn't matter what these people think, because they never knew Ed, the _real_ Ed. They only knew the sick imitation that I thought I was.

They can't possibly understand.

_Brother needs to live._

_._

_[Nine hours, forty-nine minutes.]  
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As soon as my heaves and wet coughs subside, the three of us settle down again. Neither of them seems to know quite what to say, and I can't blame them. Their teacher_, _in whom they've put so much trust, has just declared himself delusional. How can they possibly trust me now? Why aren't they running out the door, screaming and demanding that I be handed over to the Ministry?

"You were going to sacrifice yourself to bring Ed back," Ernie says, his voice barely above a whisper. It's a question that doesn't need a response; both of them know he is right. I only stare straight ahead, between the two of them, wondering how I'm going to pull it off now that they know. Surely they can't watch me every second of every day? They have classes to attend, meals to eat, sleep to catch up on. I'll find my chance, and then I will be gone from their lives. Everyone's problems would be solved.

"..._Why_?" Hermione asked after a moment, her voice hoarse with disbelief. "Why would you — "

"Because he's my _big brother_!" I know they'd never understand; Brother is the only person who could possibly know what I'm going through. He's been in my situation twice now, and he had been willing to sacrifice himself each time in order to save me. Isn't it only fair that I do the same?

"_Would he want you to do that?_" Hermione raises her voice, forcing me to turn and look her in the eye. "Just because we don't have any siblings doesn't mean we can't relate to you! What would Ed do if he woke up here— or wherever you're from— and find you gone? Wouldn't he react the same as you are now?"

"But he would be _alive_," I say, my voice cracking. "You don't understand— we've been through so much— and he's so much more important than me. If people need one of us at home, it's him!"

"Think about it a minute, Alphonse," Ernie says patiently. He tries his best to make the name sound natural, as if he's always called me that, but it comes out awkward, foreign. "Your brother had your body right there when he transmuted you, right? And it hadn't decayed or anything. But you're here, far away from wherever his body might be, and it's been _months_. Could it have been more that he just put your soul back into your body? And then, maybe, it wouldn't have cost as much, right? Maybe he's still alive!" He is doing his best to sound cheerful and optimistic, I can tell.

"Exactly!" Hermione latches onto this new perspective. "And obviously, you two being separated has to be part of the toll, right? Before, you always kept talking about how you had to get home to— to everyone there, and now..." she trails off, leaving the words unsaid. _You're willing to trade your own life for his._ "You're hurting because you're not with Ed, and he's probably hurting because you're not at home, where you're supposed to be. That's equivalence for bringing you back, right? It's a little ironic, but..."

"And— and your stomach and stuff?" Ernie says, turning a bit green. "Do you think that was taken as equivalence too?"

I nod immediately. _Teacher. _What would she say to me in this situation? The same that Hermione and Ernie are saying, most likely, along with a beating for good measure.

This whole "pep talk," as it is, is helping some. There's truth in their words; if it was, indeed, just a soul binding like it had been all those years ago, then there is a chance Brother is still alive. The separation and my guts had to amount for something, right?

_But what if it wasn't enough? _What if Brother had survived the initial transmutation, but had been so injured by whatever the Truth took from him that he didn't get help in time? And he had been wounded in the fight as well, hadn't he?

I don't know the answers, and it's killing me.

But now I'm running my options through my mind. _Brother does this all the time._ Because of their words— _so logical, Brother's logical too— _there are more options open to me, but the fact remains that I will do anything, _give up _anything, to make sure Brother is all right. If he survived, if he's recovered from his wounds, then that's the best-case scenario. But I have to prepare for the worst.

(I doubt it's turned out for the best. Truth's a sadistic bastard.)

_Bastard. Colonel Bastard. _Oh God, after talking about him so much, everything's reminding me of Brother and I can't think straight and at this rate Brother's going to stay dead and I'm going to fail and I might as well just die—

_No._ Hermione is right, to some extent. I can't just let myself die meaninglessly. If I'm going to die— which I am totally prepared to do (_just like Brother, when he was eleven and again at seventeen_)— then I'm going to make sure something good comes of my death.

_Brother has to survive, no matter what._

"Thank you, guys," I say. It's sincere. Just not in the way they hope. _But they don't need to know that, now do they?_

"You're...welcome," Ernie says after a moment, looking rather confused. He pauses a moment, apparently weighing his options. Eventually, he says— "You're a lot more polite than Ed is, aren't you?"

I laugh, and it almost isn't faked. _He might be alive. He could be alive. And if he's not, I'll fix that. Everything will be okay._ "Brother never understood manners..."

Both of them laugh as well. Ernie had obviously been worried that it was an insensitive question, but it's all right, because I know Brother's going to be okay, one way or another.

"Does he have long hair?" Hermione asks, seemingly at random. Then I remember: she caught me "braiding my hair" a few weeks ago.

_That must have looked so odd..._

I simply nod, my grin coming a bit more naturally, and both Hermione and Ernie relax. They have convinced me, they think, to not do anything rash. To not sacrifice myself for Brother. That he might still be alive, and even if he's not, life must go on.

Ha. There is no life— for me, at least— without Brother. I will confront Truth, _soon_, and then everything will be over. We both live, or he lives alone. Either way, I win.

_I can't wait._

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_[Ten hours, one minute.]  
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	17. s i x t e e n : And Then There Were None

_- Summer - Laura -_

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**. c h a p t e r s i x t e e n .****  
****And Then There Were None**

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**STOP.**

_My condition is worsening, I can tell. I'm losing weight; I can't sleep; every time I throw up, there is more and more blood._

_I'm not sure how much longer I can last._

_(I have to get home to Brother. I **have** to.)  
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_And then one day, finally, the world stands still._

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_[Ten hours, ten minutes.]_

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**EJECT.**

_[I don't want to live anymore.]_

I haven't left my office since Hermione and Ernie brought me back to my senses that day. True, I allowed myself to go through the rest of the day in fairly high spirits, but after that, there was no more pretending. I can't force myself to be happy, and I can't force myself to continue believing in the slim hope of Edward's survival. I need to make sure that he is alive; I need to make sure that he is still standing, strong and proud with his brilliant smile.

Somehow, I've become desperate enough to shut myself up in my room. I remember sending a vague note to the headmaster about my whereabouts and that the classes for the rest of the week are to be cancelled. I'm sure that it went through. No one has complained, and there was a similarly vague note that came back: _'As you wish.'_

I flip another page, ignoring the strain of my eyes against the dark black ink. I finally understand why Edward had—_has_—such trouble focusing for so long; hours and hours of reading the same thing under a dim light seems to have weakened my eyesight. It's not a problem, though... As long as it helps me get back to Brother.

The thought of my brother makes me squeeze my eyes shut. My chest hurts with a sort of pain that's unexplainable; it's that pain that you cannot reach in and dig out, or create easily. It's like a knife slashing inside my chest, wounding me right at the core.

_How could I have been so stupid?_ The morose notion, continuous through my thoughts, pops up over and over. _How did I fool myself into believing I was Edward?_

It's the Truth, I know. The Truth and its cruel, sadistic way of wanting to fuck me over. But I will not give in to it. I _will _find a way to get back to my brother — my only family. I'll find a way even if it means shutting myself up for hours in here.

After a while, the walls seem to close in; it's hard to breathe, so I open a window and rub my tired eyes. The outside air is bitter and fresh. The scent of pine trees float over and somehow — somehow it's almost nostalgic. Like the old remnant of a memory that I've long forgotton. My body sags when I sit on the windowsill, my forehead pressed against the cool glass. My eyes and brain and hands hurt; my stomach hasn't stopped its stabbing pains for hours; everything is going to Hell...but I refuse to stop.

Maybe — maybe, though, a little rest wouldn't hurt...

Immediately, a wave of guilt crashes through me. Anger. Terror. What am I doing, thinking of _resting_ when my brother is somewhere — in another _dimension _— possibly hurt or dead, maybe even looking for me just as fruitlessly as I am for him...never stopping, like the stubborn guy he is. I shoot upward, feeling the newfound desperation surge through me like an adrenaline rush.

When I head over to my books, though, piled high one on top of another in nearly every corner of the room, I feel so lost. Dizzy. Confused. I have no idea what to do, where to start, and it seems like an infinite amount of possibilities — all of them untrue or bound to fail. What do I look for? Where do I start? If Edward were here, if only Brother were here...he would know.

But he isn't here. For the first time, I realize how lonely I feel.

Dropping down to the floor, I hold my head in my heads and shut my eyes again to the world. _Think, Al. _What could possibly equal to the amount of desire I have to return home? To return to my brother? It seems endless, how much I want to see him again. And not just him, but Winry, Granny, Colonel...

I know that I will miss this place too. Hermione and Ernie, the days of teaching students (and terrorizing them at the same time, now that I think about it — goodness, I don't think Brother would've done that much either) and patronizing...Umbridge. (Was I about to call her Imabitch?)

Just thinking of leaving them, my friends, makes me sad. Genuinely sad. Enough to make me bow my head lower and sort of sigh through my mouth, just to see if I can remove some of the gradually increasing depression off —

_Of course._

I stare at my hands, wondering if it was ever this easy. Ever this hard.

My memories of this place. Magic, Hermione, Ernie, Dumbledore, Umbridge...everyone, all of them. They're worth something. The knowledge of their land, their people, the emotions that they've caused me to feel and the things that I've given them — they're worth something. Possibly enough to go back.

But to forget this place? Forget England, the wizarding world, all the people here...can I really do that? Just leave them, out of nowhere, with no hope of knowing — of understanding — what I did? Can I really do that?

A flash of Edward—beaming and happy and _alive_—runs across my mind, and I think, if I could forget everyone and everything — _everything _— to go back, then I would.

I would.

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_[Ten hours, forty-three minutes.]_

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**REPLAY.**

The November night air is freezing and does nothing to help the almost overwhelming nausea and pain coursing through my body _(I can't have much time left I have to get home to Brother)_. It bites against my cheeks and I'm pretty sure that my hands are numb from the exposure. For a second I humour the thought that I might have frost in my hair or such, but then I get serious again as my breath comes out in visible puffs of air. I'm almost there. So close.

Energy hums beneath my fingertips as I touch the ground, drawing lines and circles, words that are all familiar and at the same time so foreign. Though I've been out here since the cold dead of midnight, I can see that the sky is slowly turning a brighter shade of blue — I've spent all my time preparing, mentally and physically, for the deed that I am about to do.

It's not hard to choose from the limited possibilities; either this works, or I die. _(I'm probably going to die anyway.) _And I know, I _know _that there's so much more that I can do, that I can learn, if I had the time, but in my mind this is the solution that fits for me. I will go to my brother or I will die trying.

When I stand upright, I take in a large, shuddering breath, ignoring the way my hands seem to freeze and my body just wants to shut down. _No, _my mind tells me, _don't do it. Walk away. You can find another way. There is always another way._

_Not for me, _my heart says. And my heart is never wrong.

Slowly, I walk to the middle of the circle. I pull the coat tighter on my shoulders so I am just a bit warmer, and the red fabric brushes against my nose. It doesn't smell like Brother. Not anymore. I don't think it ever has. It's something from this world—not my own, not my home.

And, somehow, I feel _wrong _wearing it now. It's too big for my shoulders, too long for my frame. It's like a burden on my back that I can't seem to remove. It's the constant reminder of my brother — that I am never him, that I could never be him, never be his wonderful brilliance or his stubborn determination. The reminder that I will not — possibly ever — amount to everything he is, was, and will be.

But that's okay. Because it's him. And if it's him, I can never hate it.

The coat slips from my shoulders, and the cold air overtakes me with an iron fist. I swallow thickly; thankfully, I don't feel the hot prickle behind my eyes that I expected as I throw the jacket to the side.

_Edward Elric has never been here._

They will remember. I will not.

I clap my hands together, feel the buzz of energy, hear the clap of lightning, the stormy roll of thunder, the shift of the earth beneath my feet. Breathe in the electricity, set my limbs on fire, fly away to another place far away. I clap, and I set my hands down on the chalky earth beneath me, and soon the words and desires and intentions flow through my brain like a never-ending river of knowledge.

The world ends with a blinding flash of light.

.

.

.

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_[Eleven hours.]_

_._

_._

_._

.

**_and in the end..._**

I cannot sleep tonight.

The night is thick and dark, and when I close my eyes I am drowning. The dormitory is quiet; Parvati and Lavender and the others have already fallen asleep...

I envy them, I realize. I envy them and their sheltered beliefs and their oh-so-simple lives. Because I cannot sleep as soundly as they do; my dreams are not of handsome men and children and white picket fences. Instead, mine are plagued by demons that have never been named, monsters who look just like humans, and devils who only want to destroy innocent lives.

I see Professor Elric _(his name is Alphonse, he's no older than me—I want to call him Edward and it kills me_ _inside_), with his wide, kind eyes and his short-cropped hair and the way he truly, truly is. And then I see the man my mind has created to be his older brother—Edward—who is not Alphonse in any way except he _is,_ because...

_(He thought he was his older brother and suddenly everything makes sense. The scowls that seem so out of place, the harsh tone that isn't isn't ISN'T him, the way he fiddles with hair that doesn't exist—)_

It all makes a sickening amount of sense, but that doesn't make it right. It doesn't make it better; it doesn't make the darkness encroaching on all of our lives any brighter.

Ginny is dead, and Alphonse is taking the blame.

I wish I could do something—_anything—_to make this right...but what am I, in the end? Just a sixteen-year-old know-it-all who thinks she's better than she really is. In the end, I'm only a child; in the end, I can do absolutely nothing to help those I care for.

(It strikes me as strange, I think, that Alphonse is my age yet he seems so much older. He has a hardness in his eyes, a desperation and a cry for help and a plea—_just let it end—_that I've never seen matched. Even Sirius, even Professor Lupin, even _Dumbledore_ has never looked so aged.)

I don't understand, and I doubt I ever will.

.

.

I lie awake for most of the night, staring at the canopy above my bed _(scarlet gushing red pain blood **please ****make it stop**)_ and wondering with growing desperation how I can possibly help Alphonse save what is left of himself. He tried so hard—_so hard_—to convince me and Ernie that he is fine, that he won't do anything stupid, and while Ernie seems to believe him...

I don't.

Not for one second.

(I've seen that _I'm fine_ face one too many times. Harry wore it so much last year...)

The last time I saw Alphonse was after dinner on the night he made that horrible revelation. His eyes were unfocused; he was not at all there as I tried to talk to him, to get through to him...but he was _(is)_ gone. It's terrifying, to see him like this; before, he had been so full of vibrancy and life. And even if that was not truly him—even if that was Edward—it's still a part of him. I'm sure of it.

I've tried to convince Harry and Ron of this, that Alphonse is a good person and they shouldn't hate him and none of this is his fault, but Ron, especially, will not budge. I can see the pain, the despair, the _desperation_ as they struggle for dominance in his features. He wants—no, _needs_—someone to take the blame. His little sister is _gone._ The little sister who he's always doted on, the little sister who is _(was)_ fiercely protective of her family, the little sister who could _definitely_ hold her own in a fight...

She was just standing in the wrong place, facing the wrong way, with her back to the wrong spell.

It was an accident, and we all know it, but that doesn't dampen the pain at all.

Professor Elric has simply become a non-topic between the three of us. I believe one thing; Ron believes the other; and Harry is stuck somewhere in the middle, with his desire to think the best of everyone combating with his desperation for someone to blame. _(As an honorary Weasley, Ginny was his little sister, after all. But perhaps there was a bit more...) _Our friendship is too strong to shatter for this; our bond is too great for this to ruin us. But sometimes, when Harry confides in me when we are alone, I'm not sure how much longer Ron can take this.

He sees Professor Elric in the hallway daily, sees the way he's not sleeping and not eating and _absolutely hates himself_ for this. And I think that somewhere, Ron knows that it wasn't his fault that Ginny is dead. But he's proud and he's stubborn and he's a _Gryffindor male,_ so he can't go back on his word...not now. And somewhere, he wants to apologize and tell Professor Elric that he knows it's not his fault...but then he has no one to blame and then where will he be?

It's a horrible situation, one with no way out and no happy endings because _Ginny is dead_ and the blameless are taking all the blame while those desperate for comfort only add fuel to the fire.

I cannot sleep tonight, because my thoughts are filled with the three boys in my life who are only striving for happiness they can never_ (never) _reach.

I don't know how long I lie awake like this as my thoughts spiral and my mind collapses and my heart bursts...but suddenly, the pre-dawn glow from our window is illuminated in a brilliant blue light. _(I know it's Professor Elric—**Alphonse—**even before I am out of bed, even before my mind registers this light as the energy of a transmutation. Who else could it possibly be?)_

I don't know what he's done, but as I dash to the window, desperately search for the source of the crackling light, I recognize the crushing feeling in my gut as the one I felt when I faced down that basilisk.

_This is the end, and there's nothing I can do to stop it._

_._

_._

I'm not the only one who's dashing downstairs to the common room in the few seconds after the light fades. Harry and Ron are there, along with Fred and George; clearly, they have been getting no more sleep than me _(and Alphonse.)_ We share a quick, wordless glance before running as one toward the portrait hole. We are in pajamas and thin dressing gowns, and it is the middle of November; surely, we will catch our death of cold if we stay outside for too long...but I don't care about that right now, and I'm sure the others—no matter how much they deny it—feel the same way.

Because in the end, even if he's a professor, even if his eyes are inexplicably old and everyone treats him as an adult...he's barely sixteen, lost and alone in a dangerous, _poisonous_ world.

We are not the only group making our way outside. We meet several older Ravenclaws on the Grand Staircase; they look concerned (perhaps alarmed) as they rush downstairs with us. Surely, they have realized what the blue light is...who it has to have been...

We make our way across the grounds quickly—Harry was able to identify the light as coming from the Quidditch Pitch. Somehow, Dumbledore is already there; he is standing on the edge of a burnt section of the grass, staring sadly at something in the middle of the field.

It takes me several seconds to realize that this barely-curved line of ash is the outer edge of a transmutation circle.

I step forward slowly, cautiously, because the charred grass is still faintly glowing and who knows if the array is still dangerous? But Dumbledore does not stop me, and nothing happens as I step over runes the size of Hagrid's palm, lines as thick as my arm, toward the red mass of _something_ in the center.

I don't know what it is; I don't know what Alphonse has done; all I know is that this array is the most complex I have ever seen. I can't even _begin_ to understand what he tried to do with this transmutation, but I can make an educated guess—after all, the only thing he talked about while Ernie and I tried to calm him down was his older brother. _Edward. The real Edward._ We had tried to talk him out of it, but what chance in Hell do we stand when we're up against an Elric?

_(It doesn't matter which one—not really—Ed is harsher than Alphonse but they share that same drive, that same desperation fueled by family. It's amazing...amazingly dangerous. I am terrified for what has happened to both of them.)_

I don't know what I expect to find at the center of the circle. Perhaps this mass of red is Edward, bloody and collapsed; perhaps it is Alphonse, in that coat he seems to love so much; perhaps it is nothing at all, an illusion tricking our eyes to see what is not there. But when I finally arrive, still picking my way around runes and lines and embers, all I find is Alphonse's coat, still with that symbol emblazoned proudly on the back, crumpled and lonely on the muddy ground. I pick it up with shaking, disbelieving fingers, and look back at those outside the circle. We all know what has happened.

Alphonse is gone.

.

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**_(It begins to snow.)_**

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_[Eleven hours, seven minutes.]_

_._

_._

_._

_._

**_...nothing really matters._**

It is dark—the middle of the night—but nobody in the office is sleeping.

Edward doesn't seem to sleep at all, anymore; whenever he dozes off in a meeting, whenever he lies down on a couch, he always wakes up screaming. I don't know what he dreams of; I'm sure I don't _want_ to know. But this grief, this terrible foreboding, is tearing us all apart...

(_I had found the alley where they were attacked, after Edward was whisked off to the hospital. There were no bodies, no evidence of a rebound—only blood. I do not tell Edward this, but there is far too much for Alphonse to still be alive.)_

The muggers have been arrested, but that does nothing for any of us, because things like _Alphonse is gone_ and _there's nothing we can do _and _Edward is falling apart_ are tearing our lives to pieces. Alphonse Elric, the sweetest boy who has ever lived, the bravest and fairest and kindest person I've ever met, is _dead and gone._

None of us want to admit it, but Alphonse was like a little brother—no, _a best friend—_to all of us. He's earned his title as an adult, now, at sixteen (he earned it years ago, when he retained his sanity in that Goddamned armor)...but when I remember him, all I can see is a boy, scared and alone and frightened, with only his big brother at his side as they try to fix their lives.

_They thought their problems were over. _After Alphonse regained his body, after he was healthy again and everything settled down...everyone thought they could be happy—be the teenagers they never allowed themselves to be.

And then this happened.

.

_[Eleven hours, eleven minutes.]_

_._

I don't know how to make this better; I don't know how to make our lives right again. This isn't something I can _scorch, char_, _incinerate_ and _get rid of forever._ I couldn't fix Mister Hawkeye; I couldn't fix Maes; and I can't fix Alphonse, no matter how much I wish I could.

It's nearing dawn, and while Falman is snoring lightly on the couch, the rest of us are awake. Edward is sitting at one of the desks, scribbling madly on yet another piece of paper. He has worked, nearly non-stop, to find a way to bring Alphonse back, because _there wasn't a body so he has to be alive._ I know the chances of this are slim—virtually impossible—but nobody has the heart to tell him to stop looking. This is tearing him apart at the seams, but to see him lose it entirely would, somehow, be worse.

Suddenly, there is a knock at the door, quiet and unsteady and barely audible. Everyone glances up, startled; it is barely six o'clock in the morning; nobody should be here at this time. I nod to Riza, who draws her gun and steps quietly toward the door, listening for a moment before flinging it open, aiming her gun at whoever is on the other side.

I cannot see who the intruder is; I cannot guess who stands in the doorway. All I see is Riza's gun drop from nerveless fingers as she takes a quick step backward, making a strange sort of choking sound.

I am on my feet in an instant, gloves in place and poised to snap...but Riza only steps back further, letting the man into the room. Suddenly, my hand has gone slack as well.

"_Alphonse...?"_

_._

_[Eleven hours, eighteen minutes.]_

_._

If I am honest with myself, the boy looks utterly terrible. His skin is the color of chalk, and his red-rimmed eyes are framed by dark circles. (He looks no better than Edward, in fact. _What has happened to him?)_

He does not answer; his eyes flash around the room desperately, taking in everyone as they stare at him in shock. Everyone, that is, except for Edward...who is still working furiously over his paper, scratching out and redrawing and scowling and crumpling and restarting again and again and again...

But Al's eyes come to rest on his brother regardless, staring in wonder as the pile of rejected circles grows ever-higher next to him. I think, suddenly, that we should wake Ed from his trance, because _this is Alphonse_ and by some miracle _he is alive_, but Al beats me to it. He is across the room faster than I can move, staring down at his older brother with wonder (and panic?) in his eyes.

"Brother..."

His voice is a hoarse whisper, something forced out, something barely audible. I don't expect Edward to look up at his voice, because he is lost in his own mind, the algorithms and the angles and the runes that might be able to save his little brother. _(He hasn't said a word in days.)_ But, inexplicably, his head snaps up immediately as his gaze shoots around the room, searching searching searching _(begging)_ for the source of the voice to reveal itself. And when he finally finds Al, standing feet from him across the desk, his eyes widen and his mouth drops open and papers go flying as he _leaps_ over the desk to embrace him in a bone-crushing hug.

I feel like I'm intruding on something far too personal as Edward lets out something akin to a sob and grips his brother tighter. "Oh God, Al...we didn't know where you were, I thought you might be—"

It is a moment longer before I realize that Alphonse is not embracing him back.

_._

_[Eleven hours, twenty-one minutes.]_

_._

There is something wrong with his eyes, I realize as I take a cautious step forward. They aren't vibrant, lively, like they have been for years. They are quiet and somber and _dead..._and for one horrifying moment, I think that this may not be Alphonse after all. _(But he has to be, because Envy is dead and gone and nobody else could do something like this, there's no other way—)_

Ed realizes that there is something terribly wrong as well, for he releases his brother and holds him at arm's length, his eyes wide and terrified and more alive than they have been in months. "Al, what's wrong? Are you okay? Does anything hurt? The hospital's not far from here, you'll be fine—"

It's not just Al's eyes that are wrong, I notice now. If Ed wasn't holding him up, surely he would be on the ground; his face has grown impossibly paler, and his legs are shaking like jelly as he stares back at his brother with a strangely serene smile on his face.

"I'm...it's fine...really...there's nothing..."

Just as he says this, though, he bends over and there is a horrible retching noise and suddenly he is on the ground. There is blood everywhere and Edward is covered in it and everyone else is upon them in an instant, yelling and sitting Alphonse up as he continues to vomit red everywhere _everywhere EVERYWHERE _and what is going on why is this happening _please God someone save him_—

Edward is screaming his name, ignoring the blood caking his clothes as he pushes Breda to the side, shoves me and Havoc away, to grab hold of Al's shoulders and pull him close, staring into his eyes with unmatched horror and desperation.

"AL! ALPHONSE! _What did you give up?"_

Somehow, Al finds it in him to smile, though it looks horribly demented and _wrong_ because there's a thick trail of blood down his chin that we can't do anything to stop. "This...this's nothin'...missin' this f'r months..."

His eyes list to the side, and Edward slaps his cheek harshly, desperately, as if this will fix whatever is wrong with his brother's insides. "_Alphonse, you listen to me,"_ he says, his voice choking as his eyes fill with angry tears. "I swear to God, if you let go now—"

"It'll b'fine," he insists, though his eyes are getting duller and duller by the second. I gesture madly for Fuery to call an ambulance _(just like so many months ago)_, but somehow, I don't think it'll matter...not this time. "Broth'r...really...you 'kay...?"

_"What?" _The question throws Ed off, and I have to admit that it's a strange thing to ask when _Al_ is the one vomiting his insides across the office. "Yeah, Al, I'm fine, and you're gonna be fine too! See, Fuery's calling an ambulance, they're gonna take good care of you and then we're going to—to go home to Winry and _fuck _the stupid military, _fuck _Central, we're gonna be happy out in the country, you'll see—"

He chokes again, and he must slap Al's cheek again to get him to focus. I am holding the boy up from behind, now, because Ed is shaking so badly I doubt he can support his weight. _(The boy is light—**too **light—what is wrong with him this is not_ _good) _I try not to jostle him, because God knows what has happened to his insides and what could possibly make it worse (_it's already bad—I doubt there's much else we could do_), and Ed's trying to keep him awake even as tears cascade down his cheeks.

"Listen to me, Brother, you're going to be fine," he says through a mouthful of tears, and it must be bad—_horribly_ bad—because Ed almost _never_ calls Alphonse that. "The ambulance is on its way and they're gonna fix you up and—"

"It'll b'fine..." Al insists, and I can see his eyes focus on Ed for just a moment before they drift away again. "Love...you...Broth..."

_"ALPHONSE! What happened to you?"_

The tears are thick and fast on Ed's face, now, but he ignores them in favor of grasping his brother's face in his own, begging him to hold on _just a little longer._ And I realize, suddenly, what Al means by "it'll be fine." _He _won't be fine—he knows exactly the state he's in. But Ed...he's alive...and to Al...

"_Please, tell me what's wrong—"_

"Don'...'memb'r..."

Ed is yelling more, is screaming at his brother to stay with us, but I know he is beyond help. Whatever Al did—whatever he sacrificed to get himself home to his big brother...it's too much for his ravaged body to handle. If he was already missing some of his innards, like he said, what else could the Gate have taken...?

"Thanks...f'r ev'rythin'..." Al trails off before taking a gasping, shuddering breath that doesn't seem to give him any oxygen. I wonder suddenly if his lungs are missing as well. "Love...you...Br..."

His head lolls against my arm, and he is silent.

**_"ALPHONSE!"_**

The scream is terrible, is the worst I've ever heard. I have no idea Edward is capable of making such a sound as he pulls his brother from my grasp, his eyes wide and horrified, shaking Al's limp form.

It's useless.

He's already...

"Please.._.please..._"

He knows...he knows and yet is unable to accept, as he hugs Alphonse tight and rocks back and forth. He's mumbling nonsense to himself, to his little brother, and tears stream down his cheeks as he is lost to the world. Nothing matters anymore. Nothing matters except the boy in his big brother's arms, covered in his own blood, wearing a serene smile that was only ever meant to put others at ease in his last moments of life.

_(Always, he puts others before himself. He wanted to comfort his brother, comfort his friends, because he knew he was dying and there was nothing anyone could do to save him.)_

"You've always been the best, you know..." I hear Ed say into Al's hair. Tears cascade shamelessly down his cheeks as he continues to rock back and forth. "I never could have asked for a better brother. No matter what...what I did. I ruined your life and I still..." Sobs wrack his body before he can continue—"I love you too, Brother. Thank you...for everything..."

The paramedics are here, but it is far too late. Edward will not let go of his brother's body, will not allow them to clean the blood from either of them, will not respond to anything except his brother's slowly stiffening form. There is nothing any of us can do.

The world has stopped in horror; time has frozen for this unspeakable tragedy...

Alphonse Elric is gone.

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_[Eleven hours, forty-six minutes.]_

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_._

_._

_._

**_f i n ._**

* * *

**_Summer: _**_It's been a long journey for all of this with this story. We've thought over theories and stayed up late at night to piece everything together. We've had fun answering your beck and call, and we've also had fun writing it together. And though we've grown as writers, and as people, thank you for sticking with us to the end. We—and I—hope that you'll stick around for the next ones as well, no matter how long it might take._

**_Laura:_**_ ^ What Summer said XD;; She's way more eloquent than me~_

_Before you throw rotten tomatoes at us, please believe us when we say that this chapter was always supposed to be the last. Maya never actually got around to writing it, so Summer and I just decided to finish it haha_

_Grammar, formatting, tenses, awkward wordings have all been fixed by yours truly~_

_And...well...thank you all, again. Seriously, there are no words for the love we all feel for you :3_

_(P.S.—I'd say I'm sorry for the ending...but I'm really not XD;;)_


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